Transcript

- [aja monet] Hello listeners. I hope you all are doing well in these very challenging times. I want to personally thank you for joining me in The Sound Bath and extend the same question that I ask all of our guests to you. So click the link in the show notes to leave me a voice message and let me know, what sounds bring you a sense of calm or wellbeing? What does care mean to you and what kind of care are you exploring right now? We can't wait to hear from you. And don't forget to like or follow us and leave us a review wherever you find your podcasts.

- [Derecka Purnell] A racial capitalism is killing Black people. Fred Moten has this incredible sentence where he says, "Policy kills more Black people than police do." And that's true. That's true. Our proximity to premature death is a direct consequence of the political and policy decisions that are made by people who are now Black and brown in office. Like, that is the reality that we're in. All right, that is the reality that we're in.

- [aja monet] Hello listeners. My name is aja monet, and you are here listening to The Sound Bath, a podcast brought to you by Lush Cosmetics. Thanks so much for joining us on this journey through season two of The Sound Bath. We've had so many beautiful and inspiring conversations. This is the final episode for this season, but stay tuned for more coming soon. Today, we have Derecka Purnell. She is a human rights lawyer, researcher and author who works to end police and prison violence by providing legal assistance, research and training in community-based organizations through an abolitionist framework. As a Skadden Fellow, Derecka helped to build the Justice Project at Advancement Project's national office which focused on consent decrees, police and prosecutor accountability and jail closures. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, she co-created the COVID19 Policing Project at the Community Resource Hub for Safety Accountability. The project tracks police arrests, harassment, citations and other enforcement through public health orders related to the pandemic. Derecka received her degree from Harvard Law School, her BA from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and studied public policy and economics at the University of California-Berkeley as a Public Policy and International Affairs Law Fellow. Her writing has been published in "The Oxford Handbook of Race and Law" in the United States, forthcoming, "The Harvard Journal of African American Policy", The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New York Magazine, Boston Review, Teen Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. She's currently a columnist at The Guardian and Scholar-in-Residence at Columbia Law School. But most importantly, she's the author of "Becoming Abolitionists." I'm so excited to have her on our show. Let's get started. I'm very excited to have you, Derecka. There's so many things I wanna speak with you about, but we'll begin with just a very, like, quick welcome and thank you for even agreeing to do this. I know you're busy and you're working on so many wonderful things in the world, but it's an honor to always hear you speak, and to be in conversation with you. And as we welcome you, I think the best way to start is for you to just let me know, and the listeners know, how would you like to be described? How do you see yourself in the world? What is a way that you may not feel like folks see you, or a way that you identify that you don't often get identified as that you would like to introduce to us today?

- [Derecka Purnell] I am a student of the Black Radical Tradition. I am a child of writers and comedians and dancers. I am a parent to very, very petty and precious children. I am a sister of five siblings. I am a partner to an incredibly loving person, and I try my best on my best days try to be a good friend to those who love me, show up for me and encourage me.

- [aja monet] Those are wonderful ways to describe yourself and all very, very true.

- [Derecka Purnell] Aw, thank you.

- [aja monet] This might not be the way that many people would begin, but I wanna speak about your children. There's a moment that you shared with me recently of your son, I believe it's Juice?

- [Derecka Purnell] Yes.

- [aja monet] And Robin D.G. Kelly, incredible scholar and historian of our time, in conversation with each other at a book reading, I believe.

- [Derecka Purnell] Yes.

- [aja monet] And this moment with your son speaking to, you know, respectfully an elder in our community, right, was such a powerful moment where I think, not only did he exhibit his own creative, ambitious, wondrous and very like stern analysis of the world, but a bit of his imagination. And it showed, you know, it was really beautiful to see the environment that he's raised in that was able to produce a young person who could speak so freely about their own ideas and their own ways of seeing the world. And I wanted to ask you, what has it been like, yeah, raising a child as a, not just an abolitionist and a scholar, and a writer as a thinker, but just as a mother in this world who wants to see a different world. Like what are the ways that you feel like your children push you and also, you know, invite you into new visions and new ways of seeing the world? In what ways have you had to protect and instill certain visions in the household?

- [Derecka Purnell] I guess, like I said in my introduction, I am a child of writers, entertainers, dancers, auto workers, mechanics, nurse practitioners. I mean, all of this, right? And because of how we grew up, because of where we grew up in South St. Louis, in the classic supported neighborhood, people took care of each other. And I grew up in spaces that were deeply intergenerational. When I was in my twenties, we had five living generations of people in our family, and we were all in rooms together, always arguing with each other. The kids would play, but kids were also invited to be a part of the conversations. And so, as early as 10 years old, I was my mom's best and favorite space partner, right? This is the kinda space that we grew up in. And so now, as a parent, especially at a time where people are much more, at least seem to be much more disconnected from in-person spaces and much more attracted to online virtual, fleeting moments, I tried to protect part of what made my childhood so special, was that intergenerational, you know, those intergenerational opportunities to learn and grow where children and elders and adults are all learning and growing and pushing each other, okay? And so I felt very, very lucky to have kids who I can have conversations with, who I could be honest with about some things in the world. Not everything, but some things about the world. And I tried to push myself the way that my mom pushed herself is when my child would ask a question, not to always say, you know, don't worry about that, or I don't know, or stop talking, right, to shut them down. But to offer an explanation of the world, you know, to answer that question with also a level of humility. And when I honestly don't know something to say, "oh, you know, actually, I don't know, we should look that up". Or, "this is why I think this happens, why do you think this happens?" And so being able to be in conversation with Juice, my oldest, and with Garvey, my youngest, in that way, I think has really cultivated a space of learning for all of us, for the three of us, and then for other people in our family. And I've noticed that when Juice and Garvey, you know, they do ask me questions, they do challenge me. I realize that you can have all the analyses about feminism and queer identities and borders and on race and on capitalism, but then your child is also being conditioned around these same ideas explicitly, implicitly, because they're in school all day, and they watch TV, and they have friends. And you have to be committed to practicing your politics, to practicing what kinds of stories and peoples and ideas you're introducing them to. And so, like for example, I didn't realize that all day at school, my kids hear boy and girl, boy and girl, boy and girl. Good morning, boys and girls. This is the boys and girls bathroom. This is the boys and girls line. This is the boys and girls different times for recess right, and I have to be like, oh yeah, I have to introduce my kids to the concept of multiple genders and non-binary. And so, hearing my children pick up that vocabulary, it makes me feel more safe and more comfortable, because I know that it decreases the likelihood that they're going to act violently towards someone on a basis of gender, right? Because they know that, oh, yeah, of course people are not binary. Of course, people have multiple genders, like yeah, it's so second nature to them. And so, in that conversation with Robin, Juice was thinking out loud, thinking in public, thinking in that intergenerational space about capitalism, about the voting and democracy, and asking questions but also in the presence of someone like Robin, who was also willing to ask Juice questions, and then Juice, be able to, you know, do what we have been practicing at home, which is just think and answer with a set of curiosity and humility. And so it's interesting. It's an ongoing experiment that I believe that will continue as long as I have children 'cause I hope to make curious and humble adults.

- [aja monet] Mm, yes, certainly. Yeah, at least in relationship and friendship I know that you do. So I'm sure, as a mother, it's equally apparent. I wanted to bring into the conversation for those who don't know who are listening and are learning about abolition for the first time, what does it mean to you to be an abolitionist?

- [Derecka Purnell] Well, there's different traditions of abolitionism. When I say I'm an abolitionist, I am speaking within a tradition of prison, industrial complex abolition. And for me, what that means is a broader project to abolish all carceral community capitalist colonial violence, of abolish the systems that make that violence possible, and be committed to building a world that is more just, a world that we all deserve. And so, that looks like a process where we're fighting to eliminate those sets of violence at the same time, over time, until it's obsolete. And so, it's understanding that the kinds of abolition that we want to see, the total destruction of these systems will not happen at one time, will not happen overnight. But it's a commitment to doing what Fanon challenged us to do, which is to look at the kinds of questions that determine or set out the mission for the generation that's alive right now and ask ourselves, what is our mission for this moment in time to decrease that violence, to stop capitalism, to change, you know, colonial relationships and to upend them and to destroy them? What is our contribution to the revolutionary dreams, ideas, people, struggles that are before us today? And how do we make sure that the people who we'll be fighting for in the future won't be behind in their struggles? That's what I think it means to be an abolitionist. And so, that's what I'm invoking when I call myself an abolitionist.

- [aja monet] You're listening to The Sound Bath, brought to you by Lush Cosmetics, and my name is aja monet. I'm currently in conversation with Derecka Purnell, a human rights lawyer, researcher and author. Next up, I wanna talk to her about the dynamics of power in our society. But first ... I wonder about, you know, none of us have the answers to solutions, but as you are speaking and thinking about our human inclination to think about protection and defense in terms of police and prisons in our society and security, et cetera, you know, there's kind of this hyper, I guess, militarization of the public, in a way. From the time we're young, we see like films and TV, and all these sorts of shows that are about trying to capture the bad guy or get people to, you know, be a savior and put people in jail, or get those people in that other country to lose the war, or whatever it may be. I wanted to ask you about what are some of the fundamental things you see needing to change in terms of how we see relationships between people? I know that a lot of times, the rebuttal to abolition or the inquiry can lead to people being like, well, what if I've been abused or this person raped or harmed someone? You know, we use very big words to talk about things that are very practical in our everyday lives that show up in very practical ways in our everyday lives. And I'm wondering if someone were to listen, what could be an example of something that maybe you experienced in your personal, something either you facilitated or you saw someone else facilitate among two folks, two parties, et cetera, that had grievances, had harm, had a conflict, and were able to find a really powerful way to resolve that conflict between one another?

- [Derecka Purnell] So I think, for people who make those inquiries, one thing that I try to say is that, you know, abolition is not a magic wand. It's not going to make all harm disappear. It's a commitment to eradicating harm, and to find the best ways to prevent it, and to respond to it, right? Like, that is an abolitionist project. It isn't to say that once police and capitalists and all this stuff disappear, we're just gonna live in perfect harmony. I haven't heard any serious abolitionist thinker or organizer promote that. That's not what abolition is. At least the traditions that I come from recognizes that so much harm that we have in society is completely preventable. And so much harm that we have in society is rooted in broader oppressive projects like capitalism, colonialism, racism, homophobia, right? You can't call the police on someone for being homophobic. It doesn't stop the homophobia. If someone's killed because they hate gay people, then we can't imprison ourselves out of that. It's not, you know? And additionally, police and prisons are sites that concentrate in violence, concentrate racism, homophobia and inequality. Right? All the people in prison, if we look at how much money that they have, they're poor, they're exploited. You know, all of this violence derives from inequality. If someone is staying in an abusive relationship, because if they leave, they don't have a home to go. I know several people in that situation don't know anywhere else to go, lose childcare. You know, I write about Anes in the book as one example. Anes was in a terribly abusive marriage, and was nervous that if her husband continued to beat her and she would die, but if he went to prison, she wouldn't be able to use his income for childcare, right? These are the conditions upon which people are suffering. You know, sexual violence, oftentimes we think about rape as like, okay, we conflate that with sexual violence, but what about all the people who have sex, I guess consensually, because they don't wanna have a fight later, right? Who use sex to preempt violence? That's violence too, you know? Or feel like they have to do it outta obligation, right? Like, we're not just fighting to eliminate rape, we're trying to fight where people can freely determine what to do with their bodies in the way that's safe, right? That's the goal. And so, that would be my initial set of responses to people who are just like, you know, what's gonna happen if someone harms you? And a lot of this isn't new. A lot of this isn't new. You know, in the book I talk about, you know, being a victim of sexual violence, being raped. And what I didn't include in the book is that after it happened, I had a conversation with the person who did it. You know, and I say, Hey, this happened. This was harmful. This hurt me in this way, and it should not have happened. And one thing that I absolutely wanted was recognition that it happened, and I wanted an apology, right? Like, that's when the nother person apologized, and we had deep conversations about it. And I didn't know that that was possible. Like, I didn't realize that was possible. But then, when I thought about like, what made me even put me in a position to talk to this person, to demand this? And I remember a member of my family doing something similar to her father, to her father, and said, "Hey, when I was a child, this violent thing happened to me. That you did this to me, and you need to hear me say this." And so, people confront violent situations all the time. People say, "Hey, you know, this thing happened" and are struggling, looking for people to believe them, looking for people to affirm them, or trying to figure out the best ways to feel resolved. Danielle Sarah had this very, very, very interesting, I don't know if it's a study, but she said that in all of the people who she works with who experience interpersonal harm, I mean, like 99% of these people don't even want the person who harmed them, you know, who physically attacked them, who sexually assaulted them, they don't want them to go to prison. They want acknowledgement of what happened, and they want affirmation of how they're feeling, and they want an apology, and they want the harm to stop. People want the harm to stop. When you look at 911 call data, when you look at people who call the police to stop violence, but then they don't wanna press charges, they're trying to figure out how to get the violence to stop. You can't observe, like, or, at least, you shouldn't be able to observe like a restorative justice process. And all of them are different, all of them have, you know, different outcomes. People come to the table with different feelings, different ideas of what should happen. You have restorative and transformative justice processes that come out, Indigenous and Black traditions where there's only the person who's harmed, not even the person who, you know, committed some act of harm, right? And people are seeking healing, seeking trying to figure out, you know, how do I you know, feel differently or navigate my life knowing now that this violent thing has occurred to me that I didn't want to happen or I didn't expect to happen? Or it has happened systemically over and over and over again, and now I have to deal with what it means to be a person who's experienced this and know that I may be triggered, or I may not be triggered, I actually may feel fine, I may be able to help someone else who's gone through this, right? And so, all those processes look very, very, very, very different. But, again, those traditions of making sure that people are able to heal through their trauma, and are able to either reconcile or confront or antagonize people who have harmed them, those systems and ideas and practices are much older than police and prisons, you know, like much, much, much older. I think it's important that we draw on them and remember those, and we affirm, you know, all of the TJ and RJ practitioners who are doing that work right now. But that's not going to be the ultimate solution to prison industrial complex. Again, it's one of the tools that we need to help us repair and move towards healing injustice, but we also have to do that alongside dismantling the systems that cause so much violence in the first place.

- [aja monet] Mm. Mm. Yeah. Ooh, that was a great, great, you know, response. I think part of what I was also struggling with in framing that question was thinking about what do we know about human relationships that make relationships in general, like a complicated collaboration, right? Like, I feel like in organizing spaces, we often think and assume that people are gonna show up one way or this way or that way, but you don't really know until you're in relationship with someone, and you have to deal with the difficulty of that. I think sometimes, you know, what seems to happen in conversation is that people are all one way, or all this way, or all that way, and it's just not shown to be proven true. We have varying levels and degrees of issues that our communities are facing and people show up in all these sorts of ways. And I think we have less compassion with one another than, I don't know, of previous generations, but at least it feels like there's not a lot of compassion for.

- [Derecka Purnell] Yeah.

- [aja monet] Yeah, for showing up for one another.

- [Derecka Purnell] Yes.

- [aja monet] Oh, go ahead.

- [Derecka Purnell] No, you're absolutely right. I was just talking to Mariame Kaba about this. We had a panel and, essentially, someone asked us after the panel who just like, "Hey, you know, all of these spaces are bad and toxic and terrible, and people have these ideas". And one thing that Mariame and I, we started a conversation about was, well, you're not gonna show up to any place that's perfect, especially any movement place. Like, you're not gonna show up to any social justice space where the patriarchy is gone, the racism is gone, the homophobia is gone, because usually the people who've come to those spaces have been conditioned in a society where all of those ills manifest. What should be happening in our social justice spaces, in our spaces committed to liberation are just deep, messy experiments of the people we're trying to be, and the places we're trying to build. Like, that's what that is. They're deep, messy experiments. And we have to decide if we're gonna be committed to being a part of that messy experiment. And that it doesn't mean tolerate harm or accept violence, but it does mean going into a space and you know that, okay, well, these people are learning, they may not have it right. They may not say the right thing and be willing to be challenged to hold them accountable. And to be on the other side of that, to know that if you are a white person, you probably have very racist ideas about people of color, right? Very, very problematic ideas. And if someone says it to not be like, well, can't go in that space anymore, you know? And also, if someone says this to say, well, I need to think about that, you know, I'll go learn or I'll go figure it out. But people should constantly be challenging each other. But if it's the case that we can't struggle in those places with those deep, messy experiments of trying to transition to a more just society, then there's never gonna be a place that's good enough for any of our work to occur, and that's what frightens me. What frightens me is that the conversation around anti-Blackness just completely dismisses all the possibilities of deep struggle with other oppressed people. Right? It just makes me nervous, like, yeah, of course these people are anti-Black. We're raised in an anti-Black society, but that can't be the end of the conversation, right? That can't be the end of the conversation. But, yeah, people, of course, are gonna call you patriarchal or misogynistic, but that can't be the end of the conversation.

- [aja monet] Mm. Yeah.

- [Derecka Purnell] You know, ask yourself like, well, what have I done to recognize and understand how the misogyny, patriarchy, all this stuff is manifesting? Because at the end of the day, y'all's commitments to each other is to fight against the system that produces the misogyny, the system that produces anti-Blackness, right? And if you can't struggle with someone who's willing to try, essentially what you're doing is committing yourself to letting broader anti-Blackness flourish, and that makes me nervous.

- [aja monet] Hmm. Ooh. Yeah. Not just anti, yeah.

- [Derecka Purnell] Ah, sorry.

- [aja monet] No.

- [Derecka Purnell] It's all of it, yes. Not just anti-Blackness, all of it.

- [aja monet] Yeah. Yeah. Like, yes. Ugh, that's so true. I think what you're speaking to is about indifference. You know, we cannot afford to have indifference to the things that are going on or to the issues that we're facing as a community. And that if we know that we are society of many that make up the world that we live in together, and the country and the cities, and the states and the towns, then we have to be committed to, at the very least, conspiring for something greater for each other, you know? Because this is all we got. This is what we got.

- [Derecka Purnell] Yes, it is. Yes.

- [aja monet] Literally, I hate to tell you, but this is all we got. Well, this leads me to another part of the conversation I wanted to ask you about. You know, in your article, This System is Built for Power, Not Justice, you talk about how reforms don't create more just societies just ones where more people of color are in charge of the violence. And this is a really important part of the conversation for me, because I think the assumption is that, if we put more people of certain identities in positions of power that, you know, we will have justice or that we will see some change or shift. Now, while identity is an entry point into the issues and folks can have a certain lens based off of those identities that helps inform the solutions, that is not always the case that it translates into solutions and into healing in the community. So I wanted to ask you, what are some of the things that you see as struggles moving forward that we actually are in right now, and that moving forward, what we have to be conscientious of as we start to shift the dynamics of power in our society?

- [Derecka Purnell] Related to diversity and representation?

- [aja monet] Yes, representation, inclusion, identity, politics, all of these things that are really important for our movements to be, you know, centering and understanding, but they are not where the movement ends. It's means to an end, but it's not where it ends. And I think sometimes it becomes the end, you know, it becomes the thing. "Well, I got this covered because I have this person in this position", or "I hired this person to speak about this thing", and we have a lot of people who have new positions post, you know, the murder and brutality that we all witnessed with George Floyd and the uprisings. However, I don't know that we've actually solved, shifted, transformed, changed any of the material conditions of the people who are deeply impacted by police, prisons, poverty, et cetera.

- [Derecka Purnell] Oh, no, it's gotten worse. In fact, it's quite literally gotten worse. Right? And so, more cops have been prosecuted in this period. We have a Black and Indian vice president, we have the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, we have a Black press secretary. I mean, we can list all of the figureheads that's in office, right? Our universities, there's so many schools that responded to the violence and murder of the three people you just named, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and much more, and more, and way more people, right? So we're gonna be committed to, you know, hiring new diverse professors from different backgrounds. We're gonna be committed to that, right? So there's been, you're right, an explosion of appointments, representation, and that's not new. I spend time reading early criminal literature, criminology. And what tends to happen is that you have these criminologists who say, well, if we look at the aftermath of Rodney King, or we looking the aftermath of the race riots in the 60s, and the rebellions, if we look in the aftermath, what has happened the most is that we've gotten more Black police officers, more Black police executives, more Black mayors, you know? And you see that in Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's book, "From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation." So we know that that's a period we're just living in that moment, again, now. And unless we continue to struggle, it's gonna be a process that continues over and over and over again. But when I say that it got worse, what I mean is that inequality has risen because capitalism is continuing to dominate the planet. We see that Black people, poor people, disabled people are dying disproportionately in this pandemic. We see that police killings are on track to be higher this year than they were in the year that George Floyd was killed, right? Like, this is the reality, you know, with all of the promises of reform, we have more body cameras, we have more Black cops, more gay cops, more women cops. We have all of these reforms, and what's happening? Police are literally on track to kill more people. Police are still arresting 2 million people every year. The people who experience multiple arrests have incomes of less than $10,000 a year per the prison policy initiative, okay? So this is the reality that we have. And so, on the one hand, I deeply sympathize with Black people who are in their fifties and sixties and older, who endure particular types of racism, who look at, you know, Supreme Court Justice Jackson, and says, well, you know, if anyone is qualified for this position, it is absolutely her. And they know that one metric of white supremacy is how you are treated when you're a Black person, especially a Black woman, especially a Black woman with locs, two Harvard degrees, stellar judicial record, okay? It's like all these other people didn't have to work twice as hard to get half as far as she did, you know? And so there's a defense of what it took for her to get there. Same thing with Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris, when she became the first female vice president on pick, people were like, oh, man, okay, get ready because we know they're gonna come after her because she's a Black woman. They're gonna come after her because she's married to a white man. We know that they're gonna come after her for all of these reasons. And so, we have to defend her against that. But the defense of, you know, the Black people who are in these positions cannot obscure the violence that those appointments still go on to maintain. And that's where I get frustrated. That's where I get sad, you know? That's when I see the memes of President Obama, eight years, no scandals. It's like, well, that's because droning Black countries is not scandalous in the United States. You know, like that is what hurts. It's, okay, well take that to the next logical conclusion. How can we defend these people against the racism that they're gonna, you know, endure, but also remember that they're gonna perpetuate racial capitalism in those positions. And we have to be honest about that. And racial capitalism is killing Black people. Fred Moten has this incredible sentence where he says, "Policy kills more Black people than police do." And that's true. That's true. Our proximity to premature death is a direct consequence of the political and policy decisions that are made by people who are now Black and brown in office. Like that is the reality that we're in, all right? That is the reality that we're in. And so, if we get so caught up in Black girl magic and hashtag trust Black women, I'm rooting for everyone Black, these sentiments that should be reserved for "Jeopardy!" games. On "Jeopardy!" I root for everybody Black. On "The Price Is Right," I root for everybody Black. On the "Family Feud," I root for everybody Black, but not for people who're in office. I'm not rooting for Candace Owens. What, really? Everybody? Everybody are my ancestors' wildest dreams? Which ancestors? What? Like, whose dreams? No, no, no, no. We can't take that game show mentality and take it and apply it to everything in our reality, because then, we'll, what happens? What's the line that the kids are saying? If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. That's what's gonna happen to us. And our prizes, they're not just stupid, they're violent, and they're literally life or death, aja. I mean, you know, this, they're life or death.

- [aja monet] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oof! Yeah. Drops mic. This has been wonderful. This conversation has been beautiful. There's one final question I have for you before all guests leave we ask, being that this is The Sound Bath, what are sounds, like, when you hear them, they resonate deeply with you?

- [Derecka Purnell] Wow. Wow, wow. I love wailing sounds.

- [aja monet] Mm-hmm.

- [Derecka Purnell] Like deep gospel, sort of, hymns and wails.

- [aja monet] Mm-hmm.

- [Derecka Purnell] I don't know if it's catharsis. I don't know if I experience some release or some freedom, but when Black people are in a space and people are weeping, and it's a deep spiritual experience, it could be at a church. I've experienced it on beaches, you know, in Puerto Rico with, you know, this little Black community in Louisa. When I hear people release through moans and wails, I feel so deeply connected to everyone, like around me. I think that this is so random, but I think that's why I really love Tems' song, "Higher" because there's this background where she's just humming and it's just so beautiful. It's just so light. So, yeah, so that. I love the sounds of rain. I often go to sleep playing rain sounds, because it's just, yeah, again, calming and soothing and grounding. Like, I really, really appreciate the rain, and I really love listening to people praying in different languages. The neighborhood where I grew up, there were a lot of East-African refugees, half were Christian, half were Muslim. And, you know, there would be a time where they would all open their doors, and you would just hear all these prayers in Arabic And it'd fill our little neighborhood in South St. Louis, and when I went to Dubai for the first time, and I heard it again one morning, I was just like, oh my gosh. This is just deep, deep, deep, deep. So I love when people are making sounds together.

- [aja monet] Mm.

- [Derecka Purnell] That brings me deep peace and deep connection.

- [aja monet] Yes. Well, that sounds wonderful. Thank you so much, Derecka, for your time.

- [Derecka Purnell] Yes, of course.

- [aja monet] And for your feedback, and I appreciate you, and I love you so very much, and it's always an honor to speak with you.

- [Derecka Purnell] Oh, I love you too, aja. Yes, this was fantastic. Thank you for having me.

- [aja monet] Thank you so much for listening, and I encourage you to tune in next time to The Sound Bath. Please enjoy this beautiful sonic meditation.