the word avatar is from the sanskrit word avatāra, meaning to descend or cross over, referring specifically to the idea of a physical incarnation of a spirit or deity on earth. though its origins are based in hindu traditions, avatars are recognized by faiths globally, with various divine beings visiting earth to share a message and fulfill a prophecy. in the world of tech, an avatar is a virtual manifestation of a program’s user. over thousands of years, our avatars have jumped from one realm to another.

when i first encountered kelela’s music as a teenager, i almost questioned if she was real. i was 16 and working at a black-owned vintage boutique called poor little rich girl, and the owners were a duo of fashionable women who kept their fingers on the pulse of all things cool. it was the summer before my junior year of high school, and for a weekly $100, i’d spend three days organizing clothes, making small updates on the website, and helping to run a fashion summer camp that we hosted for kids. “bank head” by kelela swiftly made itself comfortable in the store’s playlist rotation. it was fresh and brand new, with a may 28th release date that effectively kicked off the summer of 2013. like many of kelela’s tracks, the bounce of the song’s intro echoes as if underwater; her airy vocals alluring like the tones of a siren. was she real or mirage? was i just imagining her, a hallucination of mine, lounging atop a rock in the middle of the ocean singing to the waves and sky?

it turns out that the mystique around kelela mizanekristos is a large part of the point. throughout her sonic exploration and accompanying visuals, she explores topics of spirituality, black feminist politics, technology, alternate realities, shapeshifting, human culture, and, of course, love. kelela’s work bends genres and stretches across concepts of past, present, and future. citing octavia butler as a key inspiration for her recent single “idea 1,” mizanekristos is a true student of afro-futurism and black femme expression. while exuding an air of extraterrestrial allure, kelela simultaneously comes across as extremely real and consistently relatable. like brandy, she’s a golden-toned, raspy-voiced girl next door; like sade, she’s from another realm entirely. the level of vulnerability and presence of airy vocals in kelela’s music reminds me of a similar essence of soft-strength that we witness in the sounds of janet jackson, mariah carey, and aaliyah. as pillars of the genres of pop and r&b, these songstresses mastered the utilization of breath to create pillowy, whisper tones that disarm the nervous system. kelela herself has cited janet, mariah, and aaliyah as inspiration before; she skillfully honors her muses with thoughtful reference, not replication. there is a lift and texture to the voice; it’s agile and yet grounded. these artists possess the ability to deliver messages of raw emotion, introspection, and reminiscence with a light touch; a bit of sugar mixed in with the spice.

vocal comparisons aside, there seems to be a through-line in the approaches and philosophies these women practice and the ways they engage with concepts of afro-futurism through music. black musical artists have mastered the manipulation of time, space, and sound, incorporating anachronisms and technology through devices such as sampling, backspinning, remixing and syncopated rhythms; spirituality has been at the root of black music for centuries. themes of space-time, liberation, technology, spirituality, and human nature make themselves known through these musical catalogs; through janet’s notes on love and desire overpowering the limits of time and location in any time, any place, and mariah’s emancipatory messaging in butterfly and fly away (butterfly reprise). in her book afrofuturism: the world of black sci-fi and fantasy culture, author ytasha womack identifies figures of afro-spiritualism in the forms of mami wata and isis in the posthumously released visual for aaliyah’s rock the boat, directed by hype williams. tragic and unintended, her premature passing immediately followed the production of this video and stopped time, leaving us with a final image of aaliyah, free and tranquil in an eternal paradise. the freedom to exist in your body, the safety to be generous with your heart; that’s what these women are after.

in may of 2025 i spent a few days alone in tokyo. when i checked into my studio apartment in nishi-shinjuku, i thought about the cover image and promo visuals for kelela’s rave:n, the remixes, which were photographed in one of tokyo’s capsule hotels. i listened to an interview she did with npr over a solo multi-course crab dinner at the nearest kani doraku, in which she spoke about her own intersectional experience as a queer black woman in music, love, and the world. i reflected on the sheer number of forms i’d seen this woman show up in. she’s never cowered in the face of a misogynoiristic public opinion; she’s gained even more of a sure-footedness in who she is. i sat there, the only black woman in the restaurant, with unwavering certainty of who i am. after a konbini run and a quick walk through the rain, i returned to the apartment where i danced with my headphones in, free as free could be. the following day, when i felt two white male tourists staring at me on the train, i reciprocated their glance until their gaze was redirected out of embarrassment. i know i belong here, too.

a free and unrestricted personhood is something that i hope everyone existing at the intersection of anti-black racism and gender marginalization can experience; to know life outside of the bounds of preconceived notions and societal limitations is a birthright. i’ve applied many of the lessons i’ve learned from kelela, from janet, mariah, and aaliyah, to my personal photographic work and process. named after the goddess of love, beauty, and sensuality, my series ven(us) explores the infinite facets of black women and femmes, probing the question “what do our lives look like as black femmes when we’re able to explore our wildest imaginations?” a simple yet impactful challenge to every societal structure opposing us, i ask black femmes to daydream with me, imagining universe(s) where our freedoms are protected. this series has allowed me to build worlds with others across afro-diasporic and gender identities, considering realities outside of a white patriarchal context. the goal of this series is to continue conversations around liberated identity. when we aren’t busy trying to conform for survival, what do our most free selves reflect?

i’ve always been drawn to worldbuilding that’s occurred through the music and visuals of black femme creatives throughout time. alice coltrane built physical and sonic ashrams. doechii gives us a taste of her smartly spiritual and sincerely southern space. the timbre of tems takes us on journeys far and wide, and solange and her cowboys traverse the constellations. so much agency is reclaimed when a black women constructs her own sanctuary. janet’s sanctuary is fortified by her sensual strength and vulnerability. mariah’s sanctuary was secured through her escapism, by leaving situations that stifled her liberation. aaliyah, who deserved so much more protection in this world and industry, created a sanctuary that restored her independence and autonomy. kelela’s sanctuary is an altar in the middle of the ocean, one where you are encouraged to release whatever it is you’ve been carrying for so long. mobile altars, these physical and metaphorical safe havens keep us afloat wherever we are.

i’ve taken a brief recess from listening to new avatar because i haven’t fully accepted how much i’ve been carrying over the last year. i enjoy the album deeply, and am simultaneously not always ready for the emotions it spontaneously unearths. but i stand in the fact that we need art that speaks to those feelings, because what i realize when i listen to kelela and the other black femmes producing music in this space is that i’m not alone. when i was a kid, my imagination was boundless. anything was possible, and the structures of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and the like were ineffective in my daydreams. when you’re young, you don’t think that you will spend a fair amount of your adulthood longing for the feeling of freedom that was once so inherent. you don’t understand that childlike wonder is, in some ways, resistance to a system, or that resisting a system means that you’re already dreaming of another way, of a future where circumstances are different. maybe kelela, janet, mariah, aaliyah, and the afro-femme avatars across eons were sent here to tell us to keep building what we hope to one day live in. maybe we begin to actualize liberation when we can see it clearly in our dreams.

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more on worldbuilding (+ umbrellas)

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m memory banking on youtube, still on instagram (sort of) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i haven’t written in a while, but i think about writing all of the time. i think about the groove that i was in when i initially started my substack: a post a week and ideas flowing almost involuntarily. things were slow for me and i knew at the time to appreciate the reduced pace that allowed me to do so much writing and reading and being. i jokingly called it my sabbatical to keep from spiraling into ego death. i’ve also been putting my amc membership to use, so i’ve been at the movies. i don’t have a letterboxd account, but i have thoughts about the images i see on screen, and i jot many of them down in a notebook. i’ve been thinking about writing about the movies, and one day directing ones of my own.

my first local cineplex was the magic johnson greenbriar theater in southwest atlanta. it featured a corporate rendition of an art deco architectural facade and resided towards the picadilly side of the parking lot at greenbriar mall. walking through the theater was a bit intimidating; the building felt massive and the house of the dead zombie-themed arcade games spooked me. the sight of the teenagers’ simulated shooting of the half-dead until they were full-dead revisited me at night when i would try to fall asleep, but when i cozied up in my theater seat between mom and dad, magic johnson’s intro message welcomed us to enjoy a film in our own community, and i succumbed fully to the fantasia. in 2002, johnson attempted to buy the southwest atlanta mall, but the deal ultimately dissolved. the same year sudanese-australian rapper bangs released the 2009 memeified viral sensation entitled “take you to the movies”, his attempt at attracting the attention of a young hot cinephile, atlanta lost her magic johnson theater after nearly 13 years.

the movies have historically been a venue for a dose of healthy disassociation, allowing audiences to suspend belief and press pause on their external stressors. cinema, a predecessor to television, is the foundation for how we view media on screen. early films were viewed publicly through devices like kinetoscopes, which were used for solo viewing, and eidoloscopes, cinematographs, and phantoscopes, which projected films to larger groups of people at a time. early north american movie theaters such as tally’s electric in los angeles and nickelodeon theaters across the states and canada are among the oldest in the world, contributing to the global shift towards public, communal film viewing. a derivative of ancient forms of theatre, the modern-day multiplex features auditorium-style seating so that movie-goers can enjoy an immersive experience.

during the 1920s, cinemas across the US adopted grand forms of architecture known as movie palaces, which blurred the surreality of filming sets with the structures in which they were screened. the movie palace became a blueprint of the movie experience, with institutions like the fox theater in atlanta (initially designed to be a yaarab shrine, it was once a movie palace, and now a performing arts venue) and grauman’s chinese theater and neighboring grauman’s egyptian theater in los angeles maximizing on this architectural aesthetic with revivals of traditional islamic, chinese, and egyptian design styles. there was an art to the theater itself; it was grand and loud and an odd mixture of overwhelming and inviting. movie palaces were more than just venues, they were shrines (which for atlanta’s fox theater, is apropos.) the grandiose nature of these buildings paid homage to the fan fare and imagination of movie-making, because the experience of filming, screening, and viewing cinema was universally recognized as a big deal. auditoriums are now equipped with soft (and sometimes heated) reclining chairs and direct-to-seat food service, indulging in all of the luxuries that technology currently offers us to further detach from our realities, yet many theaters today have acquired more utilitarian and uniform structural styles. some theaters also provide wheelchair accessibility, auxiliary aids, and photosensitivity notices, though a study from the inevitable foundation lets us know that we still have a long way to go in terms of accessibility and equitable viewing for those living with disabilities.

in 2012, i processed for the first time that the movies could potentially be an unsafe place. in aurora, colorado, 12 people were killed and 58 others were injured in a mass shooting that occurred during a premiere of christopher nolan’s the dark night rises, the final installment in his trilogy of batman films. “the movie theater is my home,” nolan stated in his condolences to the families of the victims, “and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me.” i was 15 years old, and the now defunct magic johnson 12 had been replaced by movies atl, now known as amc camp creek, a newer-generation watering hole for film lovers and unsupervised teenagers. i didn’t think something so terrifying would occur in my community, but i couldn’t be too sure. fights would happen outside of the now amc-operated theater when we were younger, and in later years, increased tension, disputes, and juvenile hotheadedness occasionally led to gunfire both in and outside of the venue. while black capitalism is no true salve for our problems, i do wonder if a certain level of cultural competency exercised in magic johnson theaters emphasized the importance of safety in these spaces.

the onset of the covid-19 pandemic and our subsequent dependency on streaming services further threatened the security of movie houses globally. the cultural safe haven was once again at risk, this time haunted by something airborne and seemingly omnipotent. during march of 2020, north american theaters saw the lowest dip in box office numbers since 1998. films were postponed, or made smaller; small enough to be released on our very own televisions care of netflix and hulu and prime and hbo. during this time, theatrical releases became a luxury; a relic from a not so distant past reminding us of how much we once had, and how quickly it could be taken away. attention spans have diminished alongside our aspect ratios; with the short and long-form content on our phones becoming the main source of information and media for most of our world’s population. jim egan, a researcher at the reuters institute of journalism, reported that 54% of the world receives their news through social media, with such platforms surpassing all other traditional news sources.

is there something inherently wrong about viewing films and media on phones, tablets, laptops, and televisions? absolutely not. i do, however, believe that thoughtful filmmakers imagine their works premiering for crowds on that big, silver screen, not on small rectangles watched in groups of three or less in segmented housing units across the world. thanks to pandemic-induced isolation, screen sizes, mental bandwidth, and audiences began to shrink exponentially, and somehow we had regressed from the great and mighty cineplex to solitary viewings on the 21st century kinetoscopes that we hold in our hands. one of the many pleasures of in-theater viewing is that phone usage during the show is highly frowned upon and strongly discouraged, but a looming danger of illness reverted us to something that was antithetical to the point of the cinema; something diluted and lonely.

growing up in southwest atlanta, i didn’t know that magic johnson theaters were considered the “black” movie theaters. in southwest atlanta, everything was already the black version of itself. the experience of watching a film at a theater located in the black community was all i knew, and it is one defined by collective commentary and emotion. during horror flicks, black audiences align on ideas of common sense that say “don’t go in there” or “don’t split up.” the laughter during comedic selections is a cathartic cacophony of hehes and whooping sounds. the feelings of neighborhood and shared proximity in black movie theaters emphasizes our cumulative sense of home and safety. in a world that perpetuates such a growing and unrelenting violence, i may have been naive to expect cinemas to have immunity, and maybe nolan is hyper-optimistic for perceiving the venue as something so innocent and pure. after all, there is a built-in violence embedded within the origins of photography and image immortalization. but at its best, the cinema offers us a place to laugh, to cry, to gasp in shock, all in unison at the pictures on the big glowing screen. when we slow down to share such an experience, we get to be something very true and very human, together. and doesn’t that sound like home?

i’m back at the movies now more than ever, and i’m on a mission to get you back in there, too.

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memory banking

if you’ve been here for awhile, you may have already encountered my earlier essays camera envy and i had to mend my relationship with movies, where i speak more to the different ways that i’ve engaged with films and filmmaking throughout my life thus far. in my photographic practice, i aim for images that are cinematic and utilize a narrative approach. i’ve always had an interest in storytelling beyond the static form that i primarily use, and lately i’ve been experimenting with the idea of memory banking; a play on the term that typically refers to digital units of storage for electronic devices. as the original computers, humans have the storage capacity to create personal memory banks, and my wish is that these remembrances allow you to reflect on the contents of your own. i’ll be sharing these motion collages via youtube; i hope they form bridges that connect my written and visual works and ultimately encourage more contemplative moments throughout day-to-day life.

some recent photo assignments + announcements!

• earlier this month, i photographed cyrei daniel (sweet me good), vanetta roy (eat my biscuits), brian lee (scratch food group), and ona otuama (tribal eyes/collabmd direct primary care) for business insider — the world cup is coming to atlanta. small businesses hope it pays off. (june 2026)

• last week, i photographed jade beaulieu, david jacob (mbt of atlanta), and amanda walton (slim & husky’s) for bloomberg businessweek — ‘southern squeeze’ grips US cities once known for affordability (june 2026)

• on juneteenth, mariah miranda, manuel orbegozo, and i received the 2026 NLGJA excellence in photojournalism award for our june 2025 story pride 2025: a look inside the pop-up parties reimagining queer joy, photographed for the 19th under the direction of tara pixley and lydia chebbine. i’m so honored to have worked with these talented visual journalists on such an important story!

that’s all i have for now. talk soon.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (sorta kinda) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

on what the gregorian calendar recognizes as monday, may 18th, 2026, the traditional ge’ez calendar of ethiopia acknowledges the 10th day of the month of genbot, in the year of our lord 2018. in the igbo calendar, or izu system, of nigeria, there are four days in a week, seven weeks in a month, and thirtheen months in a year. the four market days of the igbo week are eke, orie, afọ, and nkwọ; each day representative of an elemental force and the cardinal points of east, west, north, and south, respectively. the calendar year of the borana oromo people has 354 days and a new year determined by the conjuction of the constellation triangulum with a new moon, in accordance with a lunar-stellar system. in the americas, we refer to black people taking our time as being on CPT. mumbi macharia, a kenyan poet and essayist who speaks extensively on concepts of africa time, echoes notions of african philosophers that assess african cosmology as something measured by events and experiences. she states that the attitudes of time throughout african communities exhibit an adaptability reflective of relational time.

our inquisitive human nature has always encouraged us to examine our relationships with time and space as a method of understanding our existence. that curiosity has manifested through the creation of calendars, clocks, sundials, maps, pendulums, vehicles, cosmological systems, archives, mythological narratives, time capsules, telescopes, and religion. it’s why we look to the sun and moon for cyclical cues; it’s why we study hieroglyphs and fossils and preserve the remains of archaic human ancestors like lucy and turkana boy. it’s why we immediately begin calculating the estimated monthly wage of a job once we see what the hourly rate is. we long to make sense of how we got here and ache for an understanding of where “here” actually is. we hope to make meaning of the time and space that we occupy. like gravitational force itself, we’re all hoping to cling to something of substance. but is that something of substance relative, much like individual perceptions of space and time? could what we cling to as indicators of temporal and spatial significance be influenced by our cultural experiences on earth?

in his 1905 writings on the special theory of relativity, albert einstein introduced the phenomenon of space-time; the three dimensions of space being intrinsically linked to a fourth dimension of time. space-time is often visualized as the fabric of the universe, a stage on which reality unfolds. physicists have argued that the two are not to be viewed separately, but as nodes on the same continuum, dependent on one another. time does not exist if there isn’t a space for it to occur in, and points in space can’t be observed without the acknowledgement of elapsed time. in his later 1915 work on the general theory of relativity, einstein also elaborates on the occurrence of time dilation. he asserts that time is flexible, and its definitions could vary depending upon the observer. in the instance of time dilation, a person’s age could differ depending on the strength or weakness of the gravitational pull surrounding the observer’s body, a metric that is determined based on where in space the person is located. included in this theory is the claim that matter can warp the fabric of space-time, meaning that the concept itself is not as fixed or absolute as once hypothesized by isaac newton.

as african philosophers have discussed, time on the continent is polychronous, relational, and flexible. if einstein’s findings on special relativity suggest that the intersection of time and space can be perceived differently based upon the person experiencing it, could that provide additional scientific validity to the already culturally significant systems of time-keeping throughout the world? could the different calendars and attitudes towards space-time across the african diaspora hold correlation with our experience as black people on this earth?

in an 1852 speech to the rochester ladies’ anti-slavery society, frederick douglass begged the question, “what to the slave is the fourth of july?” this sparked not only inquisitions of what freedom actually meant, but all sorts of existential queries that applied specifically to the lives of black folk. how can freedom possibly exist at the same time and in the same place as a people’s sanctioned suffering? how could there be a celebration of independence syncretic with the continuity of enslavement, colonization, and genocide? in the latter months of 2025, i read octavia butler’s kindred and colson whitehead’s the underground railroad, consecutively, forming an unintentional double feature of speculative fiction focused on the temporal and spacial travel of black folks through antebellum-era america. in butler’s kindred, dana, the african american protagonist, travels through both time and space from 1976 los angeles to 1815 maryland. in whitehead’s writing, there is an underground railroad with an actual locamotive that carries cora, a young enslaved woman, from georgia to the north; an interstate journey to freedom expedited by train, though not without more than its fair share of trauma and loss. both stories follow black women of different time periods and locations who, in their own ways, traverse and teleport; though the scars of enslavement remain as a common denominator and shared experience between the two. after reading these two novels, i had a pondering of my own: what to the slave is space-time?1

to be black, it seems, is to exist in multiple time periods at all times, regardless of the space that’s being occupied, as demonstrated by both butler and whitehead in their novels. both authors artfully utilized anachronistic elements in their writing to effectively illustrate what temporality and spatiality look like for those who have been enslaved or descended from someone enslaved. dana and cora should both be gaining distance from the horrors of slavery, yet the nightmare follows them through time, and from one location to another. dana is from a post-slavery world, in what she thought was the safe and liberal state of california; cora, whose journey started in georgia, continues to have her notions of security shattered repeatedly as she travels north by train. though dana was transported to an era unfamiliar to her, and cora’s trek exposed her to places in our country that she had never even imagined, no matter when or where these women existed, they could not outrun white supremacy. after reading, i thought about the manner in which generational trauma spans different time periods and geographic locations; how black folks across the world experience the shared ache of racial persecution. what does the intersection of space and time offer to a people that are frozen in both? how does one move forward, directionally or chronologically, when systemically halted by the infliction of an unrelenting violence? what does a true future look like for black folks under constant threat of past tortures returning? when hasn’t it been both a magnificent and terrifying time to be of african descent, especially in the united states?

a black man went to the moon this year, and yet my grandmother has lived long enough to sharecrop and witness both the enactment of the 1965 voting rights act and the 2026 gutting of it. black folks are living at a constant cross roads of past, present, and future; we may be able to travel the cosmos today and become disenfranchised tomorrow. my ontological interests always return me to the conjoined topics of space and time, yet an auto-ethnographic lens prompts me to view such topics as a person of african descent. octavia butler and colson whitehead both examine the psyche of black people on the cusp of freedom who learn to regain agency over their time and physical space. this question of space-time’s significance to the black person is socio-physical. has the fabric of space-time warped to account for our conditions as black folks on earth? after centuries of being told where our bodies should be and when they should be there, maybe a practice of relational space-time in polychronic cultures is an act of both resistance and reclamation.

i wonder what aliens would think of our stewardship of time and space.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i’m beginning this writing lying in bed with my laptop balanced on my sternum. i’m situated in a position that’s sure to manifest as neck, shoulder, and back pain later in the day, yet i remain horizontal. it’s 7:43 in the morning and i’ve been awake for a couple of hours already, overwhelmed by the chaotic workday ahead of me. i’m still trying to convince myself that i have a few more minutes to rest my eyes, but my cat tiger is ready for breakfast/attention/affection and i kind of have to pee. for the past few weeks my laptop has been my sleeping partner; meaning my office has been my bedroom where each night i retire my device to the space beneath the stack of pillows that lies to the left of my head. before grabbing my laptop this morning, i laid on my side quietly, after making the mistake of using my daily instagram allowance too early in the day. a few isolated tears rolled down my face and dampened my pillow. i’ve been crying quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.

our planet abounds with static and tension as i enter my final week at 28 years old. in the news cycle, reports of gunfire at the white house correspondent’s dinner prevail as the lore of the month, with outlets sharing evacuation footage from a variety of angles. the voting rights act is being picked apart and diluted as we speak, and when i got on the evil digital pocket casino (instagram) this morning, i noticed continued conversations around a recent rapper x athlete relationship breakup; many of such discussions have done little to help the black love dynamic and have left many black women and femmes to wonder if equitable, honest, and loving partnership is still a possibility. it’s been months since i’ve been booked for any editorial or commercial projects, but i am constantly working. my days are quiet and generally pretty enjoyable, but they come with fatigue; fatigue from knowing that some things are still amiss.

my cat has since thrown up her quickly scarfed-down breakfast and is now pawing at the blinds to get a better look out of the window. i grab a stack of paper towels and cleaning solution to get rid of the mess. i have 35 minutes to quickly get ready and pick up artwork showing in a student exhibition for a non-profit fundraiser with the national black arts festival later. i love the art of fashion and design but have begun to somewhat dread the process of dressing myself. denim zip-up jacket, baggy black cargo pants, silver onitsuka tigers, and a child-sized t-shirt that is meant to remain concealed by my outerwear. hopefully, my outfit for the event later is a better attempt at style and panache.

i’ve reached friday and made it through the rush of the week. all went well at the fundraising event, i was accepted into the program i applied for at georgia state, had the pleasure of photographing wedding photos for one of my best friends, and was able to host another friend and her husband, who are on a cross-country road trip to new york, at my home. this week’s film has been dropped off at the photo lab, and my house is uncomfortably quiet (it’s the same volume it often is here). i’m currently rejecting a nap like a toddler and fighting the remnants of a hangover.

i’m exhausted, but i do feel full. full from seeing one of my best friends of 20 years in a wedding dress, arm-in-arm with her now-husband. full from receiving acceptance into a program that will further my photographic and research processes. full from seeing the students i worked with exhibit their art in a public setting. full from spending time with my friend and fellow women photograph team member, lexi, and her husband, ending off a night out together with chilled sheet masks and real housewives of atlanta streamed on an ipad. full from knowing that i can be trusted; trusted to photograph priceless milestones, trusted to support young artists, trusted to offer a comfortable space to stay for a night.

i also feel a little empty. i think i just want some rest and to hold and be held.

a weekend later and my spark has somewhat rejoined me. i spent a couple of hours outside yesterday, working in my garden and tending to plants that i thought i had killed. i made a few birthday preparations and reviewed the scanned film from my friend’s elopement photos. i went to spend some time with my friends ashley and lauryn, cousins who surprised me with the performance of an improvised cheer routine, complete with the YMCA-style spelling of my name in limbs, as i parked in front of the house (we all comically attempted our jumps and herkies in the driveway). in an impromptu run to the beauty supply store (or ‘hood sephora’ as i like to call it), i decided to dye my hair. three boxes of hair dye later, and my friends and i left our dust in the beauty master parking lot.

when i told my mom that i was dying my hair for my birthday, she reminded me that my auntie hattie used to do the same in her younger days.

the weekend concluded with a solo date to the movies and a mimosa enjoyed outside with a book. like a plant, i photosynthesized, allowing the sun’s rejuvenation to stir something within. i came back inside and was overcome by the nap that i had been fighting so hard against a few days prior.

monday again, and i’ve begun the registration process for my graduate certificate program. i forgot how confusing this shit can be. i’m not a big fan of learning new platforms and jargon. i also need a scholarship and some kind of work-study job. the tabs i recently cleared from my web browser begin to repopulate exponentially. but i’m excited about school! i’m stoked! i’m also scared of debt and financial instability. i send out some emails, wash a load of laundry, and to make space in the dryer, fold the previous load that had been there for a (mind your business) amount of time. after an abbreviated work meeting on zoom and a trip outside to water my plants, the day was done.

some kind of animal has been in my garden. i’ve witnessed footprints and a disturbance of the soil in my potted plants. there are about three or four stray cats that frequent my yard, but i’m almost certain the main culprit here is rotund, light orange, and striped.

yesterday, i found myself helping out at the gallery that i worked at for four years after undergrad. it was like riding a bike; i so easily slipped back into my role as gallerist/graphic designer/receptionist/pr that i had to remind myself that answering the phone and greeting people at the door was not what i was asked to come in and do. i think my perception of time is shifting; the nearly six hours that i spent at the gallery yesterday zipped by a lot faster than it used to.

i ended the night off back on the southside in the kitchen beauty salon of lauryn’s home, where ashley carefully applied a concoction of hair dyes to my head. forgetting how thick my hair is, i regretted not getting a fourth or fifth box of pigment. my typically dark mane now drips in hues of a brownish brick red.

i’m in my final hours of being 28. thankfully, i’m not spiraling, and my internal crises have calmed quite a bit since last week. i’ve been accepted into the certificate program of my choice, and i’ll be kicking off my birthday with a job interview that i was hoping to hear back about. so many things are in flux right now; my younger self would have buckled under such uncertainty. but i feel the tension in my shoulders loosening. i feel myself growing up in the ways they don’t always mention when we’re younger: self-assurance, intuition, a heart full of love, a garden full of grass. i’ve learned to give myself infinite and unshakeable love.

it’s good to see you making your way back around, saturn.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i haven’t been very inventive with my cooking lately, but i am proud of myself for cooking most of my meals at home these days. since so much of my focus has been on completing my application, i’m going to share a japanese classic that i’ve had drafted for a while: salmon genmaimatcha ochazuke. it’s warming, it’s filling, and if you have the right leftovers, it’s extremely expedient. i’ll be back to writing soon, so let’s just consider this a bye week.

i didn’t know how it would happen, but i always knew that one day i’d go to japan. when i was younger, i had no idea that a pilgrimage to nihon would become a quintessential step for many going through a quarter or mid-life crisis, but my parents introduced my brother and i to different cuisines early, with sushi being a go-to for a celebratory night out (or in, as my parents would also make it at home from time to time) and we were thoroughly convinced of its delectability. growing up in atlanta, ru-sans felt like fine dining, but as i got older and more curious, i wondered what other staples of japanese cooking were out there. one of my favorite things about japanese food is the simple yet methodical approach to cooking. the goal is not to over-complicate a dish, but to have ingredient staples that are so fundamentally fresh and appetizing that party tricks are an occasional touch, but never required.

during my first trip to japan, each rental home was equipped with small packs of genmaicha. i’ve been a tea drinker since i was a child, and my tastes often lean savory, so i usually enjoy my tea without any sweetener. genmaicha is a blend of green tea leaves with roasted brown rice. tasting this for the first time unlocked a new flavor profile of beverages for me. umami tea? where had i been? i wanted to drink bowls of it; i wanted it like a soup, and then i remembered — ochazuke.

ochazuke, also referred to simply as chazuke, means “submerged in tea,” and is a warm, soupy meal with origins from the heian period (794-1185). originally, the dish was made by pouring plain hot water over rice; however, people began using hot tea as the base during the edo period (1603-1868). more modern variations have included dashi broth in their recipes.

i by 0 means intend to ever come across as that person, you know, the one who traveled to x country and made it their whole personality. i’d rebut that i was into all of this as a child, and that my interests have only continued to grow with me over time. in this meal, i decided to blend genmaicha with our gorgeous, green girl, matcha, for a “broth” that’s herbal and earthy, toasted and nutty, and sometimes called matcha iri genmaicha or genmaimatcha. that being said, my sharing of this recipe is nothing new. it’s merely a free-styled version of traditional home cooking inspired by my first trip to japan.

**i should probably let you know that i will rarely ever give exact measurements (unless we’re baking) and will indicate amounts in terms such as: a sprinkle, a touch, a 2-second pour, or ‘to your heart’s desire.’ please utilize whatever culinary intuition was bestowed upon you by your ancestors and do keep your personal preferences and tastebuds in mind when making this for yourself. we’ll refer to this section of the pp-verse, affectionately, as pp’s cookbook club. xo

genmaimatcha ochazuke w/ salmon (recipe)

ingredients:

• rice (sticky rice or jasmine rice are the best, leftover rice is the most convenient)

• salmon (i usually use the trimmings of whatever piece of salmon i had the night before)

• matcha tea powder (ok i’m guessing here because i care about you, only use about 1-1.5 small scoops)

• genmaicha loose tea (i’d matcha ratios with the matcha scoops 1:1)

• pickled ginger + veggies (this version is really simple and only calls for pickled ginger, but pickled radish, cabbage, cucumber, and umeboshi — pickled ume plums — are also popular)

• green onion (don’t skip on the green onion!!)

• a soft-boiled egg (optional)

• sesame oil (optional)

• furikake (optional)

• sesame seeds (optional)

• chili oil (optional)

assembly is simple: if your matcha and genmaicha aren’t already mixed together, steep the genmaicha in hot water for no longer than three minutes, then pour it over sifted matcha and begin whisking with your chasen to blend the two teas. then, soft-boil an egg for 7 minutes (a runny or jammy yolk is ideal). in a separate bowl, spoon in your rice, pour in your tea, and layer your protein and toppings.

i love to cook, but the older i get, the more i realize that it’s an accomplishment every time i’m able to put together some ingredients and make a meal for myself. it’s a blessing to have food in my fridge, to be gifted spices and teas, to possess a curious palate. i’ve learned so much about the world through life’s offering of food.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

the cohort of midwest-based photographers that we explored the city with was instrumental in helping me figure things out. our group included arin yoon, jaida grey eagle, and patience zalanga, three outrageously talented women of color who generously engaged in cross-cultural conversations that were shared potluck-style. we were later joined by tanya habjouqa for oysters and spicy crab pasta at goodkind, whose anecdotes and ponderings invited a depth of thought (and laughter) that i am always hungry for. joined by me from the women photograph team was the absolute dream of a human being known to the world as daniella zalcman, who ended up having to uber to milwaukee from chicago after hellacious delays during her layover at o’hare.

we were graciously invited by the ruth arts foundation and rivers institute for contemporary art & thought to view their collaborative retrospective on bettina grossman, commonly referred to simply as bettina, who took up residency in manhattan’s chelsea hotel; collecting photographs, leaves, strands of hair, written notes, scraps of paper, and other preserved ephemera. i think part of what’s so beautiful about bettina’s work and practice is her noticing of lines and patterns and repetition in our daily lives. she wasted no media, honored temporality, and experimented with so many forms. we attended a panel discussion where artists who utilize nature in their practice spoke about their work within the context of bettina’s. i was most fascinated by the work of anne percoco, who leads seed-collecting missions and creates seed libraries as part of her art installations. i realized that i am at the height of seed collecting in my life; gathering information, inspiration, and new skills for future blooming. to sit with the idea of planting literal and metaphorical seeds during a time when i am both starting my own garden and collecting information for further education and research felt synchronous. when arin and i arrived to the exhibition on the first day together, i told her that the work was really resonating with me, as i’ve jokingly started embracing my crow-like tendencies recently; collecting and honoring small, seemingly mundane items from daily life — seashells, a feather, a pinch of tea leaves, incense, a pretty rock, cornsilk, small pieces of paper — even gifting them to those around me. i have an altar’s worth of these small finds at home. crows are true archivists, spiritualists, and friends.

not only did i find some really enjoyable food, artwork, architecture, and a dive bar that served me a life-saving late-night burger in milwaukee, but experiences and interactions that would not have been possible if we didn’t gather the group that we did. we spoke about the state of the industry, and turning to additional career fields and continued education as a way to ride the waves of uncertainty. tanya, who is now teaching and pursuing an MFA at the university of wisconsin-madison, spent over 20 years documenting life in palestine and the broader middle east region. arin, a kansas-city based photographer and fellow taurean whose name was also revealed to her mother in a dream, introduced us to the korean astrological system of saju, meaning the “four pillars of destiny”, which also utilizes the chinese elemental system of wuxing. later she performed oracle card pulls from a deck designed by her friend, seo choi, an atlanta-based shaman. jaida, who is oglala lakota, allowed us to meet her beautiful family and spoke about communal connections within her tribe that help preserve the security of her culture from appropriators. tribal affiliation can often be verified by recognition of a person’s parents or grandparents by other members of the tribe, which reminded me of black folks in small towns across the south all knowing one another and considering each other kin, historically as a means of safety and protection. patience is a nigerian-american photographer with experience as a social worker for youth justice groups, and when looking at her images, i can see clearly how that expertise influences the thoughtfulness of her photo-making, evident in this sobering series of images that she photographed in the warmer months of 2020. jaida and patience are both based in the twin cities area of minnesota, where philando castile, george floyd, renee nicole good, and alex pretti were all murdered by law enforcement. they have spent much of their careers documenting responses to police violence and ICE operations between st. paul and minneapolis.

it’s impossible to not talk about the world we’re all currently navigating as photographers, and journalists, and people who aren’t white men. we spoke about body autonomy, as several in our group are mothers raising daughters and guiding them through a world that seems to either scrutinize or ignore the cries of young people learning how to be themselves. i feel like their daughters are growing up with such empowering examples of who women can be and the importance of our voices being heard.

daniella and i embarked on a couple of side missions, including a visit to the milwaukee art museum’s gertrude abercrombie exhibition (MAM’s calatrava architecture is a sight to behold), an indonesian-inspired brunch at uncle wolfie’s, and a brisk walk to the frederick c. bogk house, designed by wisconsin-born architect frank lloyd wright. daniella is a photojournalist, professor of practice at tulane university in new orleans, and founder of women photograph. i call her my boss and colleague out of my utmost respect for her, but over the last few years our relationship has become familial, sisterly. last summer, while working on a photo project documenting products made through prison labor in each US state, daniella came to georgia and stayed with me for a few days. we shared post-drink bowls of phở, searched for picnic tables at high falls state park made by incarcerated people, and went to my childhood home, where she photographed my grandmother’s medicare-provided glasses. she also has so many amazing recommendations for places to visit in new orleans, and spending time with her is a non-negotiable every time i go to NOLA.

though i am painfully (theatrically) existential and constantly searching for reasons, connections, and meaning from my life, i wasn’t necessarily looking for anything in particular in milwaukee. of course i hoped to meet new people and explore the bettina exhibition, but i had no idea i’d encounter such synchronicity and affirmation. arin’s oracle pull revealed to me cards of a magpie, transformation, divine love, and warrior spirit; and saju said i need more water in my life. jaida’s connection to her family and community spoke to my own, validating my decision to keep atlanta as a home-base so i can stay close to those i love and the stories i want to help tell. patience’s advocacy work further sparked my interest in going back to school to study ethnography and photography, so i can deepen my understanding of the people i photograph. tanya, whose verve and vibe is infectious, cheered over my uttering of the word “y’all” at dinner; she grew up in texas and has missed hearing common use of the all-inclusive contraction since leaving the south. she and arin both offered me such energizing words regarding my future plans; i must’ve left the meal with a noticeable glow. as daniella and i watched arrivals and departures in reclining adirondack chairs at MKE, i felt connected to something essential; a network of truth-tellers who are loving, brilliant, and layered. i’m so thankful for groups like women photograph and ruth arts for allowing me to be in rooms with such supportive, inspiring individuals. to be in community with them is an honor and privilege, to spend time with them is an absolute joy. i honestly can’t wait until our paths all cross again.

instagram links for those who’d like to keep up with this extraordinary group of photographers on social media:

jaida grey eagle — @jaida.greyeagle on IG

tanya habjouqa — @habjouqa on IG

arin yoon — @arinyoon on IG

patience zalanga — @patiencezalanga on IG

daniella zalcman — @dzalcman on IG

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i used to ascribe the fascination to my mom’s sagittarius disposition, assuming that her fiery nature was what drew her towards the goddess associated with destruction and at times, death, but it was more than that. as a child, i didn’t realize how much we could all benefit from embodying kali’s traits when exercised with intention and care, or how the deity’s wild ways particularly supported the liberation of women and other gender-marginalized people as a supreme manifestation of shakti, or divine feminine energy. throughout the passage from adolescence to adulthood, she helped to lighten the load when it came to the baggage that i’d been carrying, and allowed me to begin appreciating impermanence. she let me know that as long as i maintained my true character, one of love, support, acceptance, and authenticity, that it was okay for me to end things that had run their course. i may be viewed as villainous, and that was okay; kali ma reminded me that i was merely doing what needed to be done.

in my adulthood, i’ve started learning more about the yoruba deity, ọya, referred to as yansã or iyámsá in spanish and iansã in brazilian portuguese. the orisha of winds, storms, and lightening, ọya also ushers in fierce and transformative energy, likening her in many ways to kali. orisha candles for ọya typically depict the colors of the rainbow, as it is said that after her forceful storms and wind come tranquil rainbows. she’s also associated with tones of deep red, purple, and brown. she represents cycles of life and death, as she is said to have become a mother of nine spirits after struggling with infertility, and also has dominion over the dead as the guardian of cemeteries. ọya is a spirit that i’ve really been drawn to lately, as her animal form is that of a buffalo (my other major zodiac signs, taurus and ox, are also in the bovinae family), she’s associated with the number 9 (one of my favorite numbers due to it’s mathematic and spiritual significance), and lately i’ve had inexplicable urges to eat pomegranates and make dark chocolate brownies (offerings to ọya include foods that are dark in color, like pomegranates, dark chocolate, and red wine). however, to be formerly acknowledged as a child of an orisha, one must seek consultation and initiation from an ìyánífá or babalawo, the highest-level priests in ifá (or their equivalent rank in santeria/lucumi, candomble, etc.) kali and ọya are both shown holding sickle-like swords in their hand, equipped for an impending and necessary severance. once again, i was exposed to a female deity that had all of the fortitude to twist the world off its axis, while also maintaining the ability to build anew with grace.

a few weeks ago, my friend and i returned to chùa quang minh, georgia’s oldest vietnamese buddhist temple, for the closing events of their mandala ceremony. this year’s mandala was constructed by visiting tibetan monks from drepung loseling monastery in india, and featured avalokiteshvara, known as guanyin in china, quan âm in vietnam, and kannon in japan. avalokiteshvara is the sanskrit name for the bodhisattva of great compassion, and the mandala ceremony is a week-long process honoring a specific theme or principle that we could all stand to carry with us throughout daily life. throughout the week, the monks construct an intricately beautiful sand mandala, lead prayer ceremonies with mantra recitation in traditional tibetan language, and then dismantle the design and disperse the brightly colored sand to ceremony guests, reminding us that even life’s most beautiful experiences are temporary, thus emphasizing our collective need for love and compassion. i hadn’t even realized that i had already encountered avalokiteshvara before, as they were referred to as the thousand-armed kannon during my visit to sanjūsangen-dō temple in kyoto in 2024. initially introduced to the buddhist pantheon as a male-presenting figure, avalokiteshvara, or guanyin, is now often represented as femme or an “androgynous mother-goddess” in chinese traditions. the most known mantra in tibetan buddhism, “oṃ maṇi padme hūm,” is typically attributed to this benevolent and gender fluid bodhisattva. chùa quang minh, a fixture of atlanta’s vietnamese community, is also home to a statue of avalokiteshvara/guanyin/quan âm, positioned in front of the main temple building.

commonalities between the ancient traditions of africa and asia are nothing new, as the two continents birthed many of the world’s oldest civilizations and traditions. mami wata, a notable figure from across the african diaspora, has a male counterpart named papi wata, whose image in modern times has referenced the hindu deities of dattatreya and hanuman, and in a recent substack i looked at healing ingredients used in both traditional african and asian diasporic practices. ancestor veneration and altar work are also key rituals of the various spiritual practices of both continents. what i’m learning from ọya, kali, and the message of the buddhist mandala ceremony is the beauty in navigating life’s ever-occurring change, and avalokiteshvara is reminding me to do so with a light touch and even lighter heart.

i’m reminded of a recent interview of jill scott, where she describes her genuine and optimistic nature and simultaneous ability to detach from potential harm. “at this age, my sword is hot, it's sharp. it's black so you can't see it in the dark, and it will cauterize before you know you're dead, and i have no negative feelings about it,” she admits with a warm smile. some might find her approach a bit cold, but i know exactly what she means. her blade, sharp as the ones carried by ọya and kali, protects her and keeps her safe, but it doesn’t make her violent. sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a person is to leave them where they are with hopes that they begin putting together the pieces for themselves somewhere along the way. you can leave them with memories of your love to use as a guide, but you need not sacrifice yourself like some consecrated lamb. as humans, our journeys often overlap and at times, intertwine, but there’s no promise of eternity. sometimes we must split at the fork in the road, traversing in our own separate directions, and acknowledge that our time has run its course. when i was a teenager, i learned to comfort myself through tough times by remembering that everything is temporary, and that in that somber-seeming truth lies freedom. in buddhism, this is referred to as the art of detachment.

but what does it mean to be a femme-presenting person in this world, embracing temporality when we’re constantly sold alluring narratives of happily ever after and forever and ever amen? i’ve noticed that when your gender is perceived a certain way in this world, you’re not expected to have the agency required to bring engagements to a close. there is immense power that comes with the ability to both commence and conclude interactions, relationships, and situations; a power that gender-marginalized people weren’t designed to have access to under patriarchy. in some sort of metaphorical act of unintended self-harm, the menfolk suffer from the same set of rules that they set up to maintain control. patriarchy is disrupted each time someone femme decides to call upon the necessary use of their metaphorical sword and thunder for a restoration of harmony. we could all benefit from leading with radical and honest love, one that understands abundance more than lack, and is thus unafraid of beginning again and starting anew.

if you haven’t arrived at this truth for yourself already, my friends, change is the one true constant. beyond our earth, in the cosmos, stars explode and go supernova every few seconds across our universe. people are dying and being born all the time, rock formations are constantly changing, and our whole way of life is structured around our planet’s consistent spinning on an axial tilt. the nature of the aforementioned deities’ shifting forms invites us to change, from kali’s four arms to ten, from ọya’s humanity to the shape of a water buffalo, through avalokiteshvara’s gender non-conformity across cultures. the power we hold is not determined by our ability to resist change or withhold compassion; it’s emphasized by our willingness to work with impermanence and to lead with a pure heart; to value our memories and loved ones deeply, knowing that they won’t always be with us. in modern times, it seems that there has been a degradation of these centuriesold philosophies to excuse emotional negligence and social irresponsibility, and i’ll admit, sometimes my inner guanyin gets a bit weary, but even ọya and kali, wild as they are, remind me that destruction can’t occur in vain. these teachings of impermanence, illustrated by kali’s assumed wrath, ọya’s stormy weather, and the granules of sand in the mandala ceremony, accompanied by avalokiteshvara’s mantras on benignity, serve as a resource of spiritual anchors. at the temple, we were shown compassion in the form of a vegetarian lunch and chè trôi nước eaten family-style at foldable tables in the temple’s back kitchen, a communal feeling akin to the southern black church experience. i believe many of us are aching for justice and our souls to be recognized by others, and neither ọya, kali, nor avalokiteshvara/guanyin/quan âm/kannon would advocate for the shielding of emotion through performed indifference. their passionate principles are supported by the inevitable passage of time and an intrinsic knowledge that can only come from the heart.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i wish i was dating, but i don’t think i should i should be right now. i don’t believe in confusing people in the midst of my own confusion. last year, i started dating a little bit after being single for nearly a year. at the time, i felt ready to start dating again; i had built the confidence up to know when to end things (i find breaking up with people to be a challenge) and i was comfortable enough in my own company to know that dating should be something fun and additional, not too stressful or confusing, and not just a hobby for me to pick up in search of entertainment. i adopted a philosophy of dating casually but with intention; meaning i’m not rushing towards my next serious and committed relationship because ideally, the next serious and committed relationship will be one that my partner and i can build a life around. i’m not looking to attach myself to anyone, especially not too early, but if i enjoy spending time with someone who has similar plans for their ideal future, i’m open to seeing where things could maybe-eventually-possibly-hypothetically go one day. i want to relish in the process of getting to know someone before even deciding if i want to be a girlfriend.

dating is a bit difficult for me. i’m pretty particular, and one of the early things that i pay attention to is the way a person navigates their life; what’s their outlook, how do they stay grounded, are they at peace with who they are? i pay a lot of attention to how spending time with a person feels. am i allowed to be my actual self, or has the other person already conceptualized me into an idea? have i started conceptualizing them, too? do they care about maintaining connection, or are they just passing through on their quest to the next best thing? are they really here with me, or still mentally swiping right and left?

because of my particularities, i started thinking of a basic set of standards to direct myself towards the type of person i hope to date. i landed at the three C’s for successfully dating someone like me: communication, consideration, and consistency. for me, these alliterative properties often operate in a triangle, and when one is lacking, you can probably expect the other two to follow suit. if you’re considerate towards someone, i believe you’ll care about communicating and being consistent. i’m aware of life’s volatility, and believe that if you can’t be consistent, you should aim to be considerate enough to communicate it. and if you make an active choice to engage in effective communication with me, i know it’s because you consider how i feel, and want your words and actions to align in consistency. i’m aware that to some this may sound rigid and annoying, but the C’s are simply a foundation on which actual partnership (or even just friendship) can be built. they won’t always be applied perfectly, but communication, consideration, and consistency can inform the way one engages in life with someone they care about. when i catch myself slipping, i also reference this triangular model to hold myself accountable. maybe it’s my taurean nature, but a thoughtful heart and a steady cadence matter a lot to me.

the last first date i went on was probably the best i’d ever been on. it honestly wasn’t until this date that i realized many of my previous first dates hadn’t been much more than tolerable or fun in theory. for me, it felt like we were the only two people in the room. the connection was quiet and electric: we were on the same page about many topics, laughed together with ease, and embraced a sense familiarity between us, one that seemed like something i could relax into. nothing was too intense, but there was, without a doubt, a charged current traveling back and forth between us. he was easy to look in the eye; the sun peeked through gray rain clouds and under the brim of his hat just to say hi to their mahogany brown. i wanted to know so much about what was behind them, and i knew that would take some time. i don’t think my way of being meshed with his in the way we’d hoped, and there is still so much i wish i could know about this person. another pisces just passing through on their journey, i suppose.

my brain is wired in a way that things have to make sense for me to continue doing them. dating casually with intention requires a balance of flexibility and purpose. yeah, this is fun, but what are we doing it for? i was scheduled to go on a date with another potential connection a couple of months ago, and i ended up canceling. i didn’t want to waste this person’s time. i was enough of my own emotional mess, and he seemed like a sweet person who deserved a chance with someone who was in a space to receive his kindness. i knew i wasn’t that person for him, and right now, i don’t know if i’m that person for anyone. i don’t think it makes sense for me to really dive into the current dating landscape with how i feel right now. i’m not completely closed off to the idea of romance, but i don’t think i currently have the energy to adamantly search for another potential connection, and i really don’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings by my own distraction and grief. i feel a bit like a romantic pessimist these days. i’m just a bit tired, and potentially a bit jaded. i realized that i should put a pause on my dating life when i privately acknowledged to myself that the only real reason i would date in the coming months is so someone suitable can come to south africa with me next year for my 30th birthday. we would probably break up the following month, anyway.

a little over a year ago, i participated in a storytelling workshop about endings and transitions. i had ended a relationship with my ex of over three years, and at the time, was seeing someone else, so i spoke with pride about getting better at the breakup process. like a mother learns to tend to her child when ill, i began taking note of the remedies required to heal my post-breakup self. it’s far too easy for me to fall into a depressive state; i had to build my medicine cabinet of meditative practices, time spent in nature, journaling, exercise, solo dates, and plans with loved ones to keep my spirits up during the recovery process. i was facing issues of attachment and abandonment head-on, understanding that if it must go, then let it leave. i ended the new relationship i found myself in less than two months after that workshop.

there is a faraway fantasy that still exists in the back of my mind where i have a family of my own, but i’m also beginning to find solace in a future of potential singularity. what does my life look like when the love once reserved for romance is reinvested into friendships and caring for children and animals and those in need in my community? maybe as i age, my ego will be stripped of its current desires of being a successful photographer or having a lifelong romantic partner. i don’t want to have to sacrifice my identity for partnership, and i don’t want my partner to feel as if they have to either. i have to be honest, i know i have to confront my own residual notions of jadedness before dating again, or i will likely hurt others in the ways that i’ve been hurt. i will take my time and show up to the plate again when i know the time is right.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i feel like i’ve been dissociating quite a bit lately. i don’t know what to do about the things happening in our world, and i’m just trying to keep myself alive and well. my mind often feels like the label on dr. bronner’s 18-in-1 soap, and sometimes i fantasize about quieting all the buzz. i’ve had escapist tendencies since i was a child, conjuring up imaginary friends and attempting to establish my own country in my parents’ backyard. i remember being a 7-year-old myself, trying to focus on my responsibilities as a kid while the world burned fast. and though they may not always be able to articulate it, the children can feel that something is amiss. earth’s hell is so hot we might as well be on the sun.

in recent days, i’ve been listening to music that reflects my desire to be somewhere else, somewhere stable. last year, i was a top 500 listener of the avant-garde jazz genre, (hopefully) contributing a respectable percentage of streaming revenue towards the coltrane family estate. i suspect that this year i’ll find myself in the top listener category again, as i start and end my day with playlists of alice, john, and pharoah. i utilize the sounds to begin my slumber, and they accompany me during morning meditation. i’ve also been listening to a potentially exasperating amount of amapiano lately, particularly when i’m driving, working, and running errands. the world is at (literal) war, but in my head i’m at a perpetual joburg rooftop bar; drinks are flowing, and my only obligation is to bounce to the beat. what i’ve gathered from my musical choices is that these days, i want to check out. i want to be on a different timeline, one where i’m still me, and i still have all my people close by, but things are different. things would be survivable. i’m not sure if all this was designed for us to survive successfully.

when i first got into amapiano a few years back, i didn’t do too much psychoanalyzing about my streaming habits. i’m the child of an 80’s dance queen, so enjoying another incarnation of house music felt natural to me, particularly with its direct ties to the african continent. as a kid, i thought club culture seemed so cool. in atlanta, we’re raised on it: the rap industry controlled the temperature and teen clubs and school dances mimicked what we were to expect as adults. i was always daydreaming about traveling, and damn near salivated over my future as someone young and hot clubbing in new york, paris, and LA. i got a little older, and kaytranada’s boiler room set was released on youtube. this lifestyle of partying and getting lost in the music was the adulthood i was promised.

my early adult years coincided with the first presidential administration of a reality TV personality. i remembered the clown show of two bush administrations as a child, but this orange one is somehow something different; still standing on the same systems of oppression that pedestal this country, with the cult now ravenous and waiting at the ready with pitchforks. in the mid-to-late-2010’s, atlanta’s trap music boom had apexed, and the sounds of our surroundings grounded us in what was current and inescapable, particularly as black people. there was nowhere else to go; we could only look around and dive right into the inevitable. we were guaranteed financial struggle, over-policing, and casual violence, at minimum. it wasn’t the sociopolitical landscape i had imagined for my grown-up self, but i could at least go to blue flame for a kelz kitchen plate with my homegirl in an attempt to self-soothe.

i eventually gained interest in yoga and meditative practices, often listening to ruminative soundscapes and singing bowl tones, but i wanted to see how other black musicians coped. i was both comforted and confronted by the entropic sounds of spiritual jazz, with many of the genre’s pioneers being active during the civil rights era and even 3 stacks making a recent and timely foray into experimental instrumentation. these artists were inviting you to both journey within and connect back to the whole, reminding us of a safe place that we all have access to. black people across the diaspora have historically used music in conjunction with faith, and avant-garde and spiritual jazz was a call to connect in another way. you get to go somewhere else, wherever you are, and that’s a skill that i believe many of us are born with but forget somewhere along the way. but what other energies could i access through the sound of music? where could i turn for more fuel to keep going, for joy?

in south africa, apartheid very closely mirrored the racial structures in place across america. the post-apartheid generations, much like post-civil rights queer youth, longed for a dance break. with roots connected to genres like kwaito from the early 90’s and chicago house music from the 80’s, amapiano is characterized by its repetitive elements, melodic piano, and rhythmic log drum beat. the musical style is known for a range of approaches; some leaning towards deep house, while others reference jazz melodies or feature heavier-hitting basslines. songs often range from around six to eight minutes, with instrumentals typically taking a minute or two to actually reach a bass drop. i think about how amapiano listeners must be patient, allowing the time necessary for the beat to build when some may jump to switch songs. what it may actually be is that yanos, or fans of amapiano, are just present and fully absorbing the moment. they’re on the music’s time, in their own little bubble of the world, yet still tethered to a collective frequency. much like the rap music scene of atlanta, ‘piano DJs are known for distributing mixtapes and largely influencing the genre, bringing it all back to the origins of the club. in a manner similar to the one i used to briefly distract my younger cousin from the doom displayed onscreen, so many of us look to dancing as a salve.

occasionally, i wonder about eras in history that i’d entertain the idea of time-traveling to, but the truth is that humans have customarily been a self-destructive species, and i guess for that reason i was born in 1997. it’s evident that a bulk of my existential maintenance these days includes healthy doses of zoning out and using music to microdose the adulthood that i still feel we are all entitled to. most amapiano lyrics come from the 12 indigenous languages of south africa, and many of alice’s chants are from sanskrit. i admit, i don’t know quite what’s being said, but what i do know is that i’m with y’all. i’m right here with y’all. my peace of mind, too, is shielded by the imaginary ashram/club that lies within.

as a treat, here are two playlists for dissociating astrotraveling through the pressure: one for sitting down and one for getting up.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i’ve been on instagram since i was 14 years old. i had instagram before i even had a smartphone, going through various channels of image sharing just to upload my photos for the masses. apparently, when i was a kid, i one day looked my mother square in her face and declared that i was “my own brand”, which is a level of awareness that my adult self is somewhat unnerved by. i’ve always had the knowledge that my career path would involve something visual and creative, and had already caught wind of young artists skyrocketing their careers by being discovered through platforms like tumblr. at that age, i explored every facet of expression: drawing, painting, theater, and music. eventually, vine and instagram would become springboards from which a career could be launched, and subconsciously i fell into a trap. i had to post; my creativity could no longer remain sequestered in my southwest atlanta bedroom. for nearly 15 years, i’ve spent almost every day on instagram. it started with innocent shares of my outfits and interests, silly moments with friends, and concert footage. at some point in high school, i understood that building a life from my affinity for aesthetics was no small feat, and it became a responsibility that i took very seriously. i would promote my musical projects and performances, market my painting, graphic, and web design services, and connect with people from miles away; all through social media. during college, i began offering social media management and content creation services for local clients, and the symbiosis between my work life and digital presence advanced. for years, i felt like i had to be on instagram for the sake of my career. because it’s an image-sharing app, and i’m in an image-making industry, i thought i had to be eternally logged in and ever-posting. i got seduced by the idea of online discovery and the doing away with generational financial stress through overnight success, which ultimately morphed into a gambling addiction of sorts. time melts away on social media, along with the rest of our reality, relationships, and natural ability to produce dopamine.

at january’s end, i read a post on substack about our society’s urgent need to divest from instagram. sent to me by an algorithmic angel; the writing reached me exactly when i needed it to. spending hours each day on instagram wasn’t improving my mental health, financial situation, or physical vitality. it was, however, forcefully jerking me around from never-ending sales pitches and GRWMs to video evidence of genocide and artificial social debates introduced to the black community through the porosity of our online spaces. the next day, on the first of february, i woke up, completed a session of language learning on duolingo, and immediately put my phone in my kitchen’s spice cabinet. i spent the day reading articles and breaking in my new sudoku book. the day was cold and i made myself some pasta for dinner. the pleasures of my time were simple, but the hours stretched long and luxuriously, allowing me to fully indulge in sunday’s true purpose. i would check the cabinet every few hours, responding to texts and calls as needed, then return to my afternoon of single-tasking, only directing attention to one screen at a time, preparing a meal without audio stimulation, and sipping a cup of tea in the quiet. what i realized by the end of the day, when i retrieved my phone with the initial intention of rewarding myself with some screen time, is that i did not want to end my night with instagram. logging on after a day of peace sounded more like punishment than prize.

i often think about how time passes so much faster in my adulthood than it did when i was a kid, and i can’t help but be of the opinion that social media use has only expedited our perception of the days, weeks, and years that pass. what i’ve noticed from a month of limited instagram use is that my days feel a lot longer and hold a lot more potential. my mind is clearer; i’m not as anxious, and overall i’m happier. my feelings still may be hurt about some little shit i’m going through, and i still encounter life’s usual stressors, but that pain and worry aren’t amplified to the nth degree every time i unlock my phone. the ways in which i spend my days now are very simple. i will hold up a seat at the library for six hours at a time, working remotely, researching, and writing for my substack. as the days warm up, i spend more time on my porch and in my backyard; finally starting the foundation of that garden i mentioned earlier. i spend time with friends and experience moments that go undocumented by IG story camera, and have reestablished my daily yoga and meditation routine with my pet cat often joining me on the mat. i spend time journaling, scribbling in a place where i can be as honest as i want, unlike on instagram, where i feel inclined to show up as my most optimized self.

the intention and presence required of me to live the life i actually want is worth so much more than my time spent at the virtual handheld casino. i recently came across photographs of my great-grandmother, my granddear, sitting outside amongst all of her plants. she had to be in her early 90s, relishing in the bliss of a life fully lived and a garden well tended to. the peace she had attained was aspirational, and i realized that if i wanted to sit tranquilly amidst my plants like her, i needed to start sowing my seeds now, as gardens aren’t grown from hours spent on instagram. to be clear, i’m not off the grid completely; i still stream my shows and dabble in the sociological study of reality TV, i watch long-form content on youtube, and have allotted a whopping maximum of 20 minutes per day for instagram, especially since it is still currently linked to what i do for work, and i usually end up coming in under 15 minutes a day on the app anyway. i still somehow find tiktok vaguely more forgiving than what instagram has become, but i haven’t been on there consistently in months either, as i’m almost always held hostage by the storage limits of my iphone 12 (i’ll upgrade to a new device when y’all stop enslaving and exploiting congolese people for cobalt and coltan.) quite frankly, i think we’re in desperate need of a collective regaining of composure and grasp on reality. if we’re of the understanding that the revolution won’t be televised, then what the hell makes us think it’ll be live-streamed or DM’d?

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

my friends, when i hyper-fixate, i hyper-fixate very close to the sun; i don’t half ass it. a film i watched in high school prompted me to do some quick googles and learn that brazil is considered the country with the most people of african descent outside of the continent of africa. one light bulb flickered on. then another statistic: over 40% of africans trafficked during the transatlantic slave trade went to brazil alone. another bulb illuminated. all these black folks and rarely were they making it on screen. in the states, black people were sparsely sprinkled into the media, even if typically as tokens to pose polarity to whiteness. we knew we were here because the american legacy of slavery has always been inescapable. brazil and other countries throughout latin america implemented the idea of branqueamento to “whiten” their nations and cultivate a selectively ambiguous national identity to cloud conceptions of history through a false “racial democracy”. to learn these things and hoard them in my own cognitive file cabinets would have never been enough for me. i had more investigating to do. when enrolling in classes for my first semester of college, i selected ‘elementary portuguese I’ to not only begin fulfilling my foreign language requirement, but to continue my long game of learning about brazilian culture and racial dynamics on a deeper level. after several semesters of “tudo bem?”, “qual é o seu nome?”, and learning about the heartfelt concept of saudade, i found out about a study abroad program offering two weeks in rio de janeiro with a scholarship opportunity available. i knew what i had to do; i hadn’t hyper-fixated that far for nothing.

over the course of the next few months, i would secure my very first passport, unstamped and innocent, receive my 90-day visa, be awarded a scholarship opportunity for the program, and prepare for my first big girl trip out of the country without my parents (before this, i had only been to canada on a cross-country road trip as a child). after 9 hours in the flying metal tin, we landed at galeão international airport; 20-something young black women with questions about the world. luckily for me and my own personal agenda, my HBCU ensured our experience centered afro-brazilian history. our main teacher and tour guide, sheila, was energetic and familiar; a wide and genuine smile was her face’s typical resting position. throughout my two weeks of carioca living, i took a drumming and dance class at a samba school, visited quilombo do camorim (a maroon colony established by enfranchised africans), and toured little africa, a historically dense area that serves as a major center of afro-brazilian history in rio. we encountered our shared history in other ways too; in the forms of offerings left on doorsteps for orixás in madureira and mano figa charms carved from wood for good luck.

on weekends, we lazed about in on praia de copacabana, sipping caipirinhas from translucent plastic cups that we’d just purchased from a vendor on the beach; three strongly poured libations for an approximate $20 USD. the recipe for a standard caipirinha is very simple: one needs sugar, lime, ice, and cachaça; brazil’s signature spirit. similar to rum, cachaça is a liquor produced through specific processing methods of sugarcane; rum through the fermentation and distillation of molasses, while cachaça is made through the direct fermentation of sugarcane juice. this led me to a question that immediately answered itself: who was picking all the sugarcane? of course, we know who was picking all the sugarcane. as i looked around, i thought about it; the same people selling these cane sugar beverages on the beach likely shared ancestry with the people that were forced to harvest the crop in the first place, and majority of those lounging on the beach leisurely likely shared complexion with those in control. a stone christ monument sits from on high, overlooking a nation aiming to flatten its racial identities into a fantasized culture devoid of racism; its caste-like dynamics glaring back at us with striking clarity through a reflection that mirrors our own.

brazil’s blackness is largely neglected in media representations, but it’s inescapable in the nation’s cultural staples. the country was the largest destination for enslaved people in the western world and was the last of the americas to abolish slavery, benefiting significantly from forced african labor for over three centuries and african identity for more than five. cachaça, the most important ingredient in caipirinhas, traces its origins back to those enslaved on a sugar plantation. brazil’s most internationally recognized genre, samba, was born in rio’s first quilombo pedra do sal in little africa and once outlawed for being too black; now the country capitalizes off of its rhythm and vibrancy. enslaved brazilians were also said to help develop feijoada, the national dish of brazil, and despite efforts to invalidate african involvement in the formulation of the traditional meal, it undeniably shares similarities with hoppin’ john, a popular legume dish of gullah communities in the united states. brazil’s national culture is extremely black, even if its image is slightly tanned at its darkest.

when walking through the equal justice initiative’s legacy museum in montgomery, alabama you’re enveloped by a room filled with the sights and sounds of the atlantic ocean. you’re instantaneously reminded that there is a bottomless and unforgiving deep separating us from our first home, and that those who birthed the grandparents of our grandparents made an impossible trek. similar to the manner in which families were torn apart on the auction blocks of america, tribes in africa were dissected at multiple doors of no return. who’s to say that our ancestors weren’t also mourning relatives lost to other colonies of the british, portuguese, spanish, french, and dutch? these languages weren’t originally ours, but what was is what lies east of atlantic shores. for many black people in the americas, tracing family trees beyond several generations can be extremely difficult, and with millions from africa shipped to brazil and enslaved by the portuguese, i have to pause and ask about the dislocation of bloodlines. brazil received the highest number of enslaved africans for a single nation during the transatlantic slave trade, and i can’t help but wonder how our lineage has been scattered throughout the western hemisphere. could we have distant cousins in brazil, martinique, benin, colombia, trinidad, angola, haiti, and so on? sometime way back, before the storm and the drowning and the blood and hate, could we have had a common ancestor, praying for protection over her captured loved ones?

in barry jenkins’ film moonlight, the character juan assures young chiron that “there are black people everywhere.” he comforts him by the ocean, letting him know he is never alone in his blackness, and that not even the deepest waters can keep us apart. in each of my travels, the statement has proven true: black people have been there every time, and i thank god for it. maybe it’s why we exchange ardent expressions when we recognize each other while traveling abroad, or treat even those of no known blood relation with an abundance of familiarity. maybe it’s why there’s a metaphorical cookout hosted by black people that everyone else is dying to get an invitation to (or juke joint, à la ryan coogler’s sinners), or why the people of brazil greeted a 21-year-old me with caipirinha sweetness and the warmth of my own mother. to be black is to be apart of an extended global community. like a forest floor’s mycorrhizal network, utilizing fungi to join a subterranean nexus of roots, our connection to the continent is implicit and ever-present, keeping us much closer together than we’ve ever been apart, and always reminding us of the soil from whence we came.

this month on substack, i’ve shared a series of black history month posts, and i truly hope you’ve followed along with me. i’ve been spending minimal time on instagram and now turn to a sudoku book when i ache for a ping to my internal reward system. in case you missed it, i put together a 2026 black history month course guide full of books, music, and media to consciously consume this month (or any month), shared my personal hero’s 90th birthday party for y’all to check out, and created a detailed list of common herbs in african and sinospheric cultures for the lunar new year. for those who have been following along, i’d love to hear from you. feel free to reach out if any of these posts were impactful for you and if you came across any additional information that you’d like to share. iron sharpens iron, you know. x

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

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the other day, three generations of my matriarchal lineage went to the dollar store for a quick errand. as we searched for a parking space of our own, we witnessed a self-driving car attempting to meet its owner at the curb. the car’s sensors, blocked by another vehicle trying to pass, were not able to propel it forward anymore, as it sensed the other automobile as an impassable obstacle. we all watched the slowly unfolding circus, but for the eldest in our trio, this was a very far stretch from the world that she was born into.

dorothy mae stepney was born on february 6, 1936 on roseland plantation in faunsdale, alabama, a few miles south of uniontown, which is where most of my family’s roots are from. my granny was born into sharecropping, and told me once that she remembers being sent out to the fields as a kid with her younger brother, my uncle sonny, to pick cotton. they picked and picked for hours and returned home with a tiny fraction of the yield that the older, stronger workers had harvested. she told me that she knew then and there that she had to imagine a life for herself beyond what any of her relatives had ever experienced. when she was around elementary age, my granny’s family moved to africatown, a community in the greater mobile area, where the clotilda crew unloaded 110 illegally trafficked africans from present-day benin, decades after the slave trade had been outlawed. education was the way that my grandmother made a way for herself and her family. she was the first to graduate college, and then went on to be the first to complete a graduate degree (and was one of the first african american students to graduate from the university of alabama’s school of social work) all while taking care of her younger siblings and eventually raising a child on her own. she taught at atlanta university, before it joined with clark college to become CAU, and she’s always valued information as a tool for personal and societal advancement.

the dorothy mae that i’m most acquainted with is the one i grew up with. when my granny moved out of our intergenerational home in the early 2000s, my brother and i would spend every weekend at her house, no more than 15 minutes away from our own. everybody else called her t-dot, but we had the priviledge of being the only two that called her ‘granny’, and friday nights were typically kicked off with wings and fried rice from hans on cascade, or fried whiting plates from kids seafood in east point (the one that used to sit right outside of tri-cities high school.) we got to stay up late, play on the dell desktop, drink coca-cola, and secretly, i grew to appreciate the smell of second-hand cigarette smoke (though my granny quit smoking nearly 20 years ago.) she would buy us scratch-offs alongside her usual cash 3 and cash 4 tickets. one time, i won $100, broke off $25 for my brother and $25 for my granny, and the rest made possible the purchase one of 2007’s most deeply coveted toys: a tamagotchi; one that i kept alive so long with my dedication and unconditional love that it eventually glitched and (lowkey) killed itself. we had sunday dinner almost every single sunday, and many times other aunts, uncles, and cousins would join us, even if unplanned, because granny’s carport door was always open and she would always make enough for everybody to eat.

during late nights watching broadcast television, my granny would consult her number grids and dream books, increasing her chances of winning big during the next lottery. sometimes the dream books looked a little spooky; they would occasionally feature a rough drawing of a crinkly male fortune teller. the idea is that whatever you dreamed about during your recent slumber could inform the lottery numbers you should pick. as long as i can remember, my granny has loved a game of chance, be it played on a small piece of lottery paper at the gas station, a casino table in wetumpka, or a card table in her living room at 1am. she has about three card game-related gatherings a week; a social calendar far more robust and consistent than mine. she never explained it to me like this, but as i got older, i realized that my granny’s quest for an uptick in luck led her to what i would call a variety of abundance rituals. like the little girl who decided that picking cotton wasn’t the life for her, my granny continued to dream bigger and imagine more for herself.

as an adult, my granny and i have been thick as thieves. i directed and shot a short film about her for a college filmmaking class, i photograph her whenever she permits, and she even rode with me to a photo job i had in tuscaloosa, because she wanted to see how much things had changed since her university days there. we used to carpool together before i had my own car, and i worked at a gallery not too far from the utility assistance office she worked at a few years ago. i don’t take my role as granddaughter lightly. my usual responsibilities include calling and visiting at least once a week and thinking of foolish shit on the fly that will elicit a hardy giggle out of my girl, but this birthday party would soon employ me as co-event planner, decorator, prep cook, photographer, hair stylist, and makeup artist.

one of the reasons i relish in the birthday behavior so much is because there was a time when black people weren’t allowed to have birthdays. allow me to rephrase that: we’ve always had birthdays, but enslavers withheld the specific dates from us, as knowing the day that marked our arrival on earth may humanize us too much. frederick douglass, whose pondering of his own birthdate has been well-documented in his autobiography, decided that he would acknowledge february 14 as his birthday. he made the estimation of his birthdate based on a conversation about his birth month held with his previous owner, thomas auld, while he lay on his deathbed, and recollections of his mother calling him her ‘valentine’ when he was a boy. all the while our birthdates were kept secret, slave owners would often celebrate the birthdays of their family and friends by “gifting” enslaved babies and children as presents. sometimes, they would even present their own young children with infant chattel, indoctrinating both the black and white child into the system of slavery. for this reason, i’ll celebrate my relatives’ birthdays for however the hell long they want.

so when murmurs of her 90th birthday celebration began, i asked ms. dot what she wanted to do to celebrate. her response: “i just wanna have a party where people can dance.”

little did she know, preparations were already underway when i had asked her this question. my granny never asks for much, and is often the one who people flock to for assistance, so we couldn’t have imagined this birthday passing by without the production of une grand fête. my family and i had previously started scheming over venues, decor, and music, enlisting my brother’s expertise as a DJ. she already had a beautiful outfit that had been hanging in her closet, unworn, for at least a year or so that we based our thematic colors on, and we knew that we’d need to start purchasing supplies little by little in advance. we wanted to give her the celebration she deserves. i often find myself trying to spoil my parents and grandparents, in a childlike attempt to thank them for decades of intention, love, and support.

so, dance my granny did, and celebrated she absolutely was. my granny’s first inclination when considering her own birthday party was to bring people together to dance; even during a time that is designed to be about her, her focus was on curating a space for the enjoyment of others. family flew in from states away, play aunties and best friends stepped in as bartenders, MCs, servers, and cleanup crew. everyone happily got in line for the queen. the super bowl was on so she could see if her predictions would bring her any cash, and we allowed her just a touch more sugar than her diabetes normally agrees with. dorothy mae, you sure know how to party, girl. happy 90th birthday to my most gorgeous #1 stunna, and while we’re at it, happy valentine’s day to my boy frederick douglass.

this month on substack, i’m sharing a series of black history month posts, and i truly hope you decide to follow along. i’ve been spending minimal time on instagram and can feel the neurogenesis occurring after nearly 15 years of daily activity on that app. in case you missed it, i’m put together a 2026 black history month course guide full of books, music, and media to consciously consume this month, or any month. for those following along, let’s check back in soon. x

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

growing up, i felt represented in my blackness by looking around my community; black folks across economic classes have contributed greatly to this city’s infrastructure and culture, and i was witness to that. my childhood was a sweet time. of course, racism still persisted, but there was a period before the 2010s when black aesthetics, slang, and creativity hadn’t been widely commodified and consumed in the mainstream yet; a time before kar-jenners and other ambiguous-appearing white women thought wearing cornrows was cool, an era before social media insidiously exploited our cultural currency for capital. africans braided rice and other native seeds into their hair for survival and preservation of indigenous tradition, not IG engagement. there was a point in time when black hair, lips, noses, butts, and breasts were loved and appreciated on black people’s bodies.

HOWEVER, this ain’t about them. this is about celebrating our history by engaging with works by black artists and scholars who have focused their practice on the exploration and celebration of black life and the liberation of black people. this black history month, i encourage you to have intimate interactions with these texts, films, songs, and creators; imploring you to love blackness actively and fiercely (this applies to you too, non-black people, as a genuine love and appreciation for blackness and black people is beneficial for society at large; you know, the message we tried to get across with the black lives matter movement.)

this course guide consists of biweekly reads, weekly films, and albums to keep in rotation, especially throughout black history month. feel free to assign the readings/viewings/listenings in the order that you please, i just ask that you play albums in order of the track list (as that is how the artists insist they be heard.) i’m not pretending to introduce you to anything new here; you’ve likely seen some of these films and heard some of these albums. i just ask that this month, you approach them with additional intention and inquisitiveness. there are no corresponding assignments or exercises; just be open to the works and see how they make you feel, what they make you think…

that being said, here is pp’s bookclub 2026 black history month course guide:

films to watch:

the spook who sat by the door (1973) dir. by ivan dixon — a friend of mine invited me to a special screening of the spook who sat by the door last fall with the daughters of director ivan dixon and sam greenlee, the author of the original book. the feeling of watching this classic for the first time in a theater full of black creatives and cinephiles was unmatched. originally released as a novel in 1969 and as a film in 1973, there is as much a hunger for the reckoning of america’s crimes against black people today as there was back then.

daughters of the dust (1991) directed by julie dash — i had the privilege of taking documentary filmmaking courses from and working as a teaching assistant for director julie dash during my time at spelman, and it’s no wonder that daughters of the dust made the waves in cinema that it did as a celebration of a black, matriarchal community preserving their traditions and operating outside of the bounds of white society. note the presence of photography as a tool for record-keeping.

drylongso (1998) directed by cauleen smith — a heartfelt example of making a film with what you have and who you know, drylongso presented me with a mirror. the protagonist, pica, is a young black girl entering adulthood, studying photography, exploring romance, and observing the world around her. when she can’t help but notice the alarming number of black men dying around her, her creative process becomes a spiritual one. similar to daughters of the dust, photography is used as a medium for remembrance.

summer of soul (2021) directed by questlove — i’ve only seen this documentary once, but i remember watching this with my parents a few years ago and feeling so much pride. black musicians have truly produced some of the most beautiful and meaningful noise in this world. the 1969 harlem cultural festival brought together the likes of stevie wonder, nina simone, mahalia jackson, b.b. king, and a young luther vandross; like a new iteration of the harlem renaissance.

texts to read:

jonah’s gourd vine by zora neale hurston — this story is a thoughtful articulation of how toxic masculinity and post traumatic slave syndrome, a venomous melange particularly for black men in the americas, can absolutely lead to their detriment. hurston has truly done the african diasporic experience justice in her work as an anthropologist and storyteller.

the vulture by gil scott-heron — gil scott-heron has long been regarded as one of the lyrical pioneers that paved the way for the genre of hip-hop, and it only makes sense that the roots of rap music centered the art of storytelling. the vulture, his first novel written during a year off from his time at lincoln university, was a bold introduction to the literary world from a young GSH.

*bonus reading: the souls of black folk by w.e.b. dubois — i’ll be reading this one along with y’all, as it’s my first time diving into it. i’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of double consciousness lately, both in my own life and in the lives of black folks overall. i was lucky enough to pilfer a copy from my mom’s book collection, but i also found a free version online for y’all.

albums to listen to:

kirtan: turiya sings (recorded in 1981, released in 2021) by alice coltrane — i’m a proud member of alice coltrane’s top 500 listeners on apple music as i listen to her when i sleep, meditate, journal, and have my tea many mornings. she is so divinely gifted, and i wanted to specifically include this album because of the way coltrane sonically blends cathartic gospel organs with cleansing sanskrit chants, combining her upbringing in a family of talented black musicians with her work as a hindu spiritual leader. i also enjoy this visualizer version of the album.

aquemini (1998) by outkast — this album is such an expert illustration of tension; between hard and soft, rich and poor, masculine and feminine, in the clouds and down to earth, aquarius and gemini. aquemini details anecdotes of a distinct, hyperlocal double consciousness that accompanies the life of a black person from atlanta, georgia particularly from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. i would argue that their approach, in a way, has influences of zora neale hurston.

santogold (2008) by santigold — those that have known me for a long time may remember that my 16th birthday party invitation was inspired by this album cover. santigold really showed young me that there was more than enough space to honor my curiosity and peculiarity as a black girl, even if i had to make room for it myself.

black messiah (2014) by d’angelo and the vanguard — i don’t think i have to say too much about this one — y’all know how i feel about d’angelo. i’m still devastated that this voice is no longer with us in the physical, but we’re so fortunate that it existed at all. i don’t think d’angelo made any songs that didn’t come directly from his heart. you can hear how much he loved being black.

*bonus track: one nation under a groove (1978) by parliament — okay so technically, one nation under a groove was originally released as an LP, then an album, but since i can’t find the whole project on apple music, i wanted to highlight their titular hit single. the universe of p-funk brought so much afro-futurism to music, and one nation begs the question; how much better could life be if we were all committed to operating under a groove??

other media to engage with:

@ihartericka on ig + hoodrat to headwrap on youtube — advocate and sex educator ericka hart-donnley does an amazing job of connecting systemic concepts, especially linking them back to issues around bodily autonomy and intersectional identities. she also has a podcast on youtube with her partner, ebony, which i enjoy so much because of the depth of the topics discussed and loving banter and kikis that accompany.

da’shaun harrison across platforms (also planning to check out their book, the belly of the beast, this year!) — da’shaun specializes in examining and writing about desirability politics, particularly in the violently anti-black and fatphobic landscape that surrounds us. da’shaun is also co-executive director at scalawag magazine, an independent publication covering stories throughout the south.

@blackforager across platforms — i was 100% a fairies and magic potions ass little girl that enjoyed being outside and savoring the nectar of honeysuckles. i’m now a fairies and magic potions ass adult, so learning about foraging and plant identification scratches that itch. alexis nikole, the black forager, is extremely knowledgeable about native plants and fungi as well as indigenous uses for them. after watching her videos for years, i am finally going to seek out a foraging and plant ID workshop to sign up for this year!!!

dianna lopez across platforms — i would highly suggest checking out dianna’s soundscape videos on youtube, perfect for a sensory slowdown and a bit of regulation for your nerves and emotions. consider playing one of her videos while you start your morning, or even during your workday. notice how you feel before watching and listening, and then after.

when you encounter these works, i hope you take notes, annotate your books, ask questions, and begin discussions. i look forward to the interest that will hopefully be piqued and the conversations that will follow. let me know what works by black folks are keeping your head above water lately, and if you’ve chosen to follow along with this course guide, i’d love to hear which pieces moved you the most. this is the first in a series of black history month posts that i have planned and i truly hope you decide to follow along. let’s check back in at the end of the month. <3

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (barely!) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

i’m no astrologist or expert by any stretch of the imagination, but for those who may not have much experience with astrology, i’ll give you a quick overview. i grew up knowing two major zodiac systems: western astrology and chinese astrology. the western zodiac assigns signs and elements based on a person’s birthday, and chinese zodiacs and elements are based on a person’s birth year within a lunisolar calendar. western astrological signs are grouped by four elements: water, fire, earth, and air, while in chinese astrology, the zodiac signs reference another set of elements, or wuxing: fire, water, metal, wood, and earth. chinese astrological elements are also specified as being ‘yin’ or ‘yang’. listed below are the signs of each zodiac, including example dates for the chinese calendar (in order):

western astrology:

aries, the ram (fire; march 21 - april 19), taurus, the bull (earth; april 20 - may 20), gemini, the twins (air; may 21 - june 20), cancer, the crab (water; june 21 - july 22), leo, the lion (july 23 - august 22), virgo, the virgin/maiden (earth; august 23 - september 22), libra, the scales (air; september 23 - october 22), scorpio, the scorpion (water; october 23 - november 21), sagittarius, the archer/centaur (fire; november 22 - december 21), capricorn, the goat (earth; december 22 - january 19), aquarius, the water bearer (air; january 20 - february 18), pisces, the fish (water; february 19 - march 20)

chinese astrology:

the rat (january 25, 2020 - february 11, 2021), the ox (february 12, 2021 - january 31, 2022), the tiger (february 1, 2022 - january 21, 2023), the rabbit (january 22, 2023 - febuary 9, 2024), the dragon (february 10, 2024 - january 28, 2025), the snake (january 29, 2025 - february 16, 2026), the horse (february 17, 2026 - february 5, 2027), the goat (february 6, 2027 - january 25, 2028), the monkey (january 26, 2028 - february 12, 2029), the rooster (february 13, 2029 - february 2, 2030), the dog (february 3, 2030 - january 22, 2031), the pig (january 23, 2031 - february 10, 2032)

the zodiac signs cycle through the following wuxing from year to year: yang metal, yin metal, yang water, yin water, yang wood, yin wood, yang fire, yin fire, yang earth, yin earth

upon my original musing of this question, i came up with the following members of my imaginary celestial zodiac with corresponding explanations and identifying qualities:

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a few weeks ago, i bought a tin of patagonia spicy mussels with several dollars and a dream, and was waiting on the right lazy night to work them into a recipe. i’ll admit, i am a silly american™ and equate most foods involving olive oil and a variety of strained yogurt with the mediterranean region of the world. known for their fresh seafood and blue zone lifestyle, many foods from this region prove to be extremely comforting and satisfying for me (a couple of years ago, i would make biweekly spanakopita as if i was cosplaying someone’s grecian grandmother.)

this meal is loosely inspired by çilbir, commonly referred to as turkish eggs. çilbir is a dish of poached eggs over strained yogurt with a spiced buttery olive oil sauce. here, we substitute eggs for mussels and some of the more traditional seasonings for the basics that i already had in my cabinet. please know that this is in no way intended to be a gentrification of the anatolian dish, and if it does come across as such, i’ll accept my digital verbal lashing with grace.

this recipe is perfect if you’re lazy and live alone and hover over your plate like a gremlin with a glass of red wine. it takes about 15 minutes and uses minimal dishes. if you’re in the path of this weekend’s winter storm and forgot to load up on groceries, this meal may come in clutch if you’re still holding on to that can of tinned fish that you bought before the last major, unprecedented weather/health/societal event we endured.

*since this is my first time sharing a recipe, i should let you know that i will rarely ever give exact measurements (unless we’re baking) and will indicate amounts in terms such as: a sprinkle, a touch, a 2-second pour, or ‘to your heart’s desire.’ please utilize whatever culinary intuition was bestowed upon you by your ancestors and do keep your personal preferences and tastebuds in mind when making this for yourself. we’ll refer to this section of the pp-verse, affectionately, as pp’s cookbook club. xo

brown butter mussels over yogurt (recipe)

• tinned mussels (i went with patagonia’s spicy mussels with red pepper and olive oil, but any basic smoked mussel stored in oil will do)

• plain yogurt (please do not make the mistake of getting vanilla-flavored or sweetened yogurt here)

• grape tomatoes (i just grabbed a handful from my fridge that was waiting to be used)

• garlic (i used one clove, but do i look like the garlic police?)

• lemon (ideally i would’ve used a little more, but i used this lone wedge before it went bad)

• butter (preferably unsalted — i used approx. 1 tablespoon)

• sourdough bread (a personal fave of mine)

• olive oil

• salt

• smoked paprika (but if you have authentic aleppo pepper, by all means do yo thang)

• garlic powder

• cane sugar (not even a full sprinkle of sugar, just a suggestion of it, to emphasize the browned butter’s natural sweetness)

start off by melting about a tablespoon of butter with olive oil in a pan on low-med heat. while that mixture begins to brown, chop up your garlic to your liking, grab a wedge of lemon, and rinse off your grape tomatoes. to your butter and olive oil, add your garlic and tomatoes, followed by salt, sugar, garlic powder, smoked paprika, a squeeze of lemon juice, and lemon zest. once the tomatoes start to blister a bit, add your mussels in (olive oil, peppers, and all), just long enough for the shellfish to warm up and the flavors to make proper introductions with each other. put this saucy mixture to the side, and in the same pan, add a touch more olive oil to the remaining fond (the caramelized bits left at the bottom of the pan) to toast your sourdough bread in. to plate, spoon your mussels and brown butter mixture over plain yogurt that has also been dressed with olive oil, salt, garlic powder, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

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to eat, savagely rip apart your sourdough bread and use it as a vehicle to get the rest of the food in your mouth. bread=utensil here, and as your friend, i just saved you another dish that you won’t have to wash.

just as a reminder (as if you needed one), there’s a lot going on in the world right now, and every meal we get to feed ourselves is something to be thankful for. sometimes my meals are really special, and that often includes the shrimp tackle box and honey lemon pepper sauce (iykyk) that i order from my local popeyes louisiana kitchen. feed your body, take care of yourself, and pat yourself on the back for making it to where you are now. i’m proud of you and you should be, too.

—

from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (lowkey against my will) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

but why atlanta as the pinnacle of american surveillance? why did big brother have his all-seeing eye focused on my not-so-little hometown? i can’t help but ask the question that white people start sputtering and coughing and choking over: is it because we’re black?

the city of atlanta holds many titles. we’re known for our once predominantly black population (census numbers currently report that atlanta is no longer predominantly black, largely thanks to gentrification, though it also doesn’t seem like they’re taking into consideration the multiracial and latino populations that also have prominent black ancestry.) we’re home to the busiest airport in the world, with an average of 2,700 flights arriving and departing daily. we also have some of the worst income inequality and economic mobility statistics in the nation, and unfortunately, house the site of the first cop city, which was so disrespectfully erected on muscogee land despite local and international calls for development to cease. what has also been interesting to witness is the rapid rise in CCTV in tandem with the development of social media. we initially thought of surveillance as something happening in the streets and transit stations, yet it has also been happening in our homes. them boys at APD are checking your social accounts, too, bookie butt.

it was a few years ago when i realized, after unexpectedly finding myself living alone for the first time during the pandemic, that i never really danced in my room as a kid growing up. i was afraid of somehow being embarrassed, as if someone was ready to jump out of the bushes with a camera, pointing and laughing at my attempt at expression. i would sing and draw and express myself less physically, but the fear of being seen kept my movements contained. it was also in my adulthood that i realized how often my brain felt disconnected from my body; like i lived more in my head than in this anatomical vessel. one day, i granted myself the privilege of dancing around the apartment alone, and i realized how great it felt. i started to do it more often, even recording myself locomoting about humorously. i recently read a substack about the witch wound, which was the first time i’d seen someone else really articulate the restriction i’d felt. i’d been out of touch with myself in a major way, burdened with the task of operating this corpus. (i’m currently taking steps to understand my mental processes further, as i know there could be a couple of reasons for these feelings of detachment between brain and body.)

but is it because we’re black? well yes, actually. for those who don’t understand the nuances here, the ‘we’ and ‘blackness’ in question can absolutely shift depending on the context. white supremacy operates under a black/white binary, meaning that in a situation where there are no black people, the next ‘least white’ community becomes the new slave/thug/alien/criminal/enemy. history has shown us that even those considered white people today, the irish, italian, and european jewish populations, were once not classified as white enough for equal treatment. so, in echoing the question, my answer remains affirmative. how could i feel connected to a body that the state has always felt entitled to? there are over 400 years of genetic memory that informs so many of us that we don’t have bodily autonomy. there are also thousands of years of genetic memory encoded within us, in conjunction with contemporary methods and research, that teach us how to reclaim agency and resist.

what is so scary, though, about being seen or perceived in this world as a black person? the names sandra bland, breonna taylor, trayvon martin, george floyd, tamir rice, philando castile, rayshard brooks, sonya massey, elijah mcclain, emmett till, kathryn johnston, and alton sterling are direct responses to the inquiry. i don’t know a single black person of a certain age who grew up without the image of a murdered 14-year-old emmett till etched into their amygdala. by the time i was 9, i knew that the police in my own city could break into a 92-year-old woman’s home, fire 39 bullets, plant three bags of weed to try and justify it (though the officers initially claimed that it was crack, not weed, being sold at johnston’s house), and handcuff her while she bleeds out and they falsify evidence. from there, it felt like a falling house of cards, black person after black person executed for being observed while black. i mentioned the black codes in a previous substack post, and it remains relevant here. in short, the black codes ensured that black folks stayed in line and subservient in the period that followed slavery, meaning that nobody was to make any waves, challenge the status quo, or even visit town if it meant that they weren’t working for somebody white. the way i see it, the end of old slavery meant that overseers and slave patrols were no longer employed, so the black codes were enforced to maintain ‘regularity’ as white america was faced with the abolition issue. the local police departments that subsequently formed picked up where they left off, and in modernity, with more free niggas than they know what to do with, the small, cerulean lights are the new overseers, keeping us all in check. enter new slavery.

for years, my city protested the development of a cop city in the weelaunee forest in southeast atlanta. nobody wanted this, because we knew what it meant for us all. after october 2023, i learned that the state of georgia was already sending law enforcement officers to israel (and, in return, IDF officers to the states) for police training activities. once cop city was built, they’d have their own model city, situated in the middle of our predominantly non-white one, as a venue for target practice. they already killed a protestor, tortuguita, who peacefully took up camp in the forest in opposition. after stepping out of the gates of their nefarious truman show backlot, they take their talents of brutality right back into town, or further south towards the caribbean, or back across the waters to our comrades in palestine, sudan, the congo, lebanon, and on, and on, and on.

when i see footage of people being kidnapped and shot in the streets by ICE and law enforcement officers (some of these faceless characters could very well be proud boys in amazon-ordered tactical gear at this point), what i really see is the aftermath of over-surveillance and the allowance of a cop city to happen; the instatement of a cop nation. atlanta has been treated like the control group; the hamsters in the lab and the monkeys in the zoo. gazans have been living in an open air prison for decades and i wonder if americans are becoming more aware of our own incarceration. black and brown americans have known this for a long time. this country, built on slavery, is already still largely supported by prison labor, and if you’re perceived out in the world as not white, the administration figures you’d be better off pressing license plates. oh — but whiteness isn’t even enough to keep you covered, as you must’ve heard that they killed renee nicole good, a queer, white mother of three in minneapolis during week one of the new year. keith porter jr., a black father from LA, wasn’t even allowed to see the fireworks of 2026.

my peers and i have been reminiscing lately over our photos from 2016, celebrating our survival of the last 10 years. 10 years ago, i was a college student protesting the murders of alton sterling and philando castile and working to support black businesses in my city. i was so optimistic then; currently i’m fatigued. we deserve so much better than what we’re being dealt. we deserve the freedom to dance down the street without assassination. we deserve livable wages, healthcare, and a reasonable cost of living. we are owed, at the least, our lives, as death is already guaranteed by our creator. tiny blue lights searching for criminals in a city country world full of suspects. i can’t pretend like any of this is normal. i want a today and tomorrow that ensure our survival. at one of the protests i attended in 2016, kendrick lamar’s alright roared from a fellow participant’s speaker. “we gon’ be alright,” we reverberated, as we found comfort in the mantra led by mr. lamar. alright, i pray, we will one day be.

—

from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (lowkey against my will) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

2025 tried to throw hands (translation: this year had a very unstable, tumultuous timeline and tried, at times, to get the best of me.) i’ve mourned people i never had the chance to meet, had the slowest fall season that i’ve ever encountered as a freelancer, and over the course of the last month or so, have noticed my dreams getting more vivid and memorable, which is sometimes unnerving, especially when i know that it means there are certain messages for me to receive. in the past couple of weeks, i’ve had dreams about people who are currently in my life, someone i intentionally cut ties with years ago, and someone i have never encountered personally. i have had three dreams about confrontation, suggesting that there was a difficult conversation or realization to be had in my waking life, and a fourth that i don’t remember much about other than a vision of a person i had only heard about. dreams remind us that we’ve encountered more people, either directly or through mutual connections, than we think.

in recent years, i’ve been quietly musing on the role and responsibility of ‘the homegirl’ in our current social structures. this community member may or may not have children of their own, may or may not even be a ‘girl’, but they always look out for children in their vicinity. for those of us who aren’t parents, we try to show up a little bit more for our homegirls who are. we run to the store for our senior neighbors and pick up birthday cards for their grandsons. we’re radically honest while maintaining a tone of care. single homegirls without kids like myself find ourselves with a surplus of love to give, actively seeking ways to make this energy useful. we make the intentional choice to show up, not in a people-pleasing way, but in a way that says that choosing community is also self-fulfilling.

last year presented a new array of opportunities for me to contribute, via contexts that i had never imagined finding myself in previously. there were moments of immense joy. i went to a non-wedding, non-funeral-related church service to see my 70-year-old friend’s photo exhibition and listen to her and her sister perform in the handbell choir. my best friend and i took her daughter on a road trip to the beach, where the 4-year-old practiced her waterbending. i prepared and delivered plant-based meals an hour south of town for a childhood friend and her husband while they were expecting their first child; in return, they’d make tea and set up a bonfire for us to catch up over. then there were the unexpected sorrows and horrors. i sat in a hospital room with my friend who’d just impaled her arm on a fence post while jumping it to gain access to her neighborhood pool. during the summer, my parents and i went to marion, alabama to attend a burial for my newborn cousin, where i helped my auntie chop veggies from her garden to prepare a salad. in return, she gifted me a bottle of hot sauce made with her very own homegrown produce. i had never experienced things quite like this in real life yet. these situations felt impossible, but there was nowhere else i would have been during those moments.

in response to the social disruption of the covid-19 pandemic, illegitimate instagram therapists, and good ol’ american individualism, there have been recent calls for the re-fortification of communal ecosystems. a rebalancing of sorts, many are now warning against the weaponization of boundaries and prioritizing the self so much that we isolate to avoid potential discomfort. the phrase “the price of community is inconvenience” echoed across 2025 algorithms, likely in response to the collective dissociation prompted by social media, AI, ever-present violence, and, more locally, the calamity and catastrophe of the second trump administration’s inaugural year. and as snappy and reverberated as the quote is, it’s also really true. yes, we still have personal autonomy and boundaries that we are allowed to maintain; however, there doesn’t have to be a rigidness that puts us all on islands of our own. even if our world were ideal and our structures utopian, we would still need each other because we were never meant to do this alone. life can be extremely challenging and if we ignore that truth for the sake of personal peace, we will ‘good vibes’ ourselves to death.

i’m not exempt from this critique either. i’ve lived the majority of the last 10 years with my phone on ‘do not disturb,’ a feature that filters most of my app notifications. my mental health isn’t always the best, and being constantly accessible can be a bit overstimulating. it was earlier last year when one of my best friends clocked me saying that i should at least have my closest folks on my favorites list so that they don’t have to call me twice for me to see that they’ve contacted me (previously, only my immediate family members were on that list.) i’ve noticed the effects of this solitude culture in dating, too. no one wants to meet in the middle if it means removing themselves from the spot they’ve dug their heels into. having the patience to learn another person is seen as laborious and unappealing in a world of instant gratification. swipe left, no thank you. except i personally want to do that work.

during the fall, i decided to revisit bell hooks’ all about love: new visions after our first encounter five years ago. when i picked it up in 2020, i viewed the words through the lens of a recent college graduate propelled into a world overcome by pandemic, political unrest, and overflowing creativity in response to it all; a modern medieval period of sorts. i was also in a new relationship and didn’t want to subconsciously repeat any mistakes i’d previously made. the mind at 28 isn’t what it was at 23. while i did initially consider the application of a love ethic as a revolutionary tool, when i reread it a couple of months ago, it was solidified in my brain as a revolutionary necessity. and this isn’t new knowledge, indigenous groups of the world have thrived in harmony with one another, and that isn’t void of conflict, but in spite of it. confrontation can be healing, especially with a conscious and mutual choice to move through it together.

some of the toughest emotional friction for me to move through involves feelings of grief. whether i’m mourning the living or those no longer on this astral plane, i sometimes struggle with definitive distance and the acceptance of unwavering change. when it comes to grieving death, specifically, my brain approaches the process like it does outer space, the depths of the ocean, nuclear war fare, and other concepts that i’m exceedingly overwhelmed by, almost to the point of involuntary interest. my neurons beg for a glimpse of understanding, so that my anxiousness doesn’t hold me hostage. in my processing of death, i lean to something beyond our traditional notions of science. i start to look towards the in-between; the metaphysical.

i’ll explain more later on the rabbit hole i went down that led me to learning about the big bounce theory, but what i’ll say for now is that newton’s laws of physics are what led me on the search. if energy can’t be created or destroyed, what really happens to the spirit of our loved ones when they cross over? when i was 15, my paternal grandmother passed away, and it was the first time someone close to me had passed away and i was old enough to have a true idea of what was happening. i was heartbroken, of course, but i was also changed. i had senselessly assumed that my grandmama would be around for so much longer, and regretted not taking in every single second. i was no longer just a tearful child, hesitantly peering over the edge of a casket during a celebration of life; i was approaching adulthood and had more of a say in my relationships with people than i originally thought. i realized how much of a gift it was to have her visit us in atlanta; how much of a privilege it was to sleep on the floor of my brother’s room so that she could have my bed, and i’d do it again an infinite number over. after her passing, i decided that if i had nothing else to give, i could at least offer my presence. in an interesting way, this allowed me to cherish photos even more, and motivated me to take on the responsibility of family documentarian and archivist. grandmama’s energy hadn’t been created or destroyed, but transmuted in a variety of ways. if to love is to be changed, i had surely been changed.

in the days following celebrations ushering in 2026, i saw my uncle in physical form for the very last time. in moments like that, i become a renewable resource of tears and snot, crying not only for myself, but for my dad, who is my uncle’s youngest brother, and my aunt, who spent decades doing life with him. i cried thinking back to home videos i’ve seen of my dad and his two older brothers as kids at american beach, one of the only beaches for black folks in the 1960s. i missed childhood memories that i wasn’t even alive for because i knew that they shaped my dad and uncles into who i knew them to be. this transition was a process, not as abrupt as some others, and i learned to cherish each recollection that my uncle shared with me, and seize every opportunity to chat with him. in the last few years, we connected over our shared love of photography as he recalled slide film he photographed and developed during his time at georgia tech studying civil engineering. he also flew planes, which makes me wonder what sort of images he made throughout his travels. these conversations to me are pieces of gold.

when expressing our limits and prioritizing self-care, we must pause to question how much we’ve been influenced to believe that our seclusion is the only way to a blissful life. once again, it is healthy to know when enough is enough, or to protect yourself from someone intent on mistreating you, but for the love of god, would you consider leaving room for a bit of flexibility? the love in my life is so true; it’s the kind where my friends claim themselves as proud aunties to my pet cat tiger, my granny makes salmon croquettes to order when i walk in the house, and my parents are local favorites at our neighborhood bar, not because they’re big drinkers, but because they adopt children and family members wherever they go. this romance can’t be peddled by candy empires or curated by media execs; it’s everything they wish they could so eloquently direct or scrawl in messages across sugary hearts. for the new year, i didn’t write down any specific career goals, but i did start brainstorming small at-home gatherings to host for my friends. i hope to share more meals, secrets, and shared memories to stash away for later nostalgia. i hope that in 2026, we wake up and realize the beauty around us instead of salivating over whatever is on the other side of our screens. i hope we choose to rise to the occasion of emotional responsibility.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (lowkey against my will) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

well, friends, we’ve made it another approximate 365 days around our neighborhood galactic plasma ball. soon i’ll do a bit of a reflection of what i learned from the experience that was surviving “the great american experiment” in the year of our lord 2025, but for now, we’ll focus on some of the things that i was able to enjoy. my literary, musical, and cinematic picks for the year aren’t only works that were released in 2025, but also projects from the past that came back around to tap me on my shoulder at this stage in my life. certain things enliven you right when they need to. sometimes you have to dance and pop your butt to remind yourself that it’s yours to pop; sometimes you have to read black historical fiction to remind yourself who’s trying to convince you that it isn’t.

that being said, here is pp’s bookclub’s best of 2025:

best reads:

**i regret to inform the members of pp’s bookclub that pp did not complete many books in the first 2-3 quarters of the year. i tried to start the year off with julia cameron’s the artist’s way and i will write later about how crazily i fell off with that book. i was too depressed to read at some points; i think between late july and early september, but i’ll have to cross-check my camera roll and text threads to confirm my mental health timeline. i picked back up with reading this fall and am #recommitted.

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the black shape slumped in a chair [essay] by aisha sabatini sloan (2022) — to know me is to know that i’m a little bit of a FLW nerd; not because i think the man was an angel or even the best architect (technically speaking, he wasn’t), but his lore was insane. a few years ago, i became fixated on the story of the fire and killings at the taliesin home in wisconsin, and his subsequent depression and obsession with mayan revival style. i stumbled upon this essay that ties in a lesser-discussed kerry james marshall work that references the deadly event on a may morning during this year’s trip to tokyo. i love encountering people in the wild who think about the shit i think about.

kindred by octavia butler (1979) — this was my first octavia butler read, and her command of storytelling is magnetic. i deeply enjoyed the science fiction element of this story and found myself asking the question — do the black people that have been told they’re “not like the others” or “one of the good ones” know that they’re still in danger? i don’t want to spoil too much here, since this will inevitably be a topic for a more in-depth review.

azurest blue by saint heron (2025) — this was not only a meditation on the architectural pioneer that was amaza lee meredith, but additionally both a labor and story of love. meredith’s parents, a black woman and white man, loved each other and their families against each racial barrier. amaza and her partner, dr. edna colson, loved each other as black queer women during a time when their intersectional identities could have ostracized and endangered them in their day-to-day lives. the pair loved their black community so much, they created havens for the love and rest of others. romance after romance after romance.

the underground railroad by colton whitehead (2016) — my final read of the year, after a false start a couple of years back. it is an up-down-left-right jaunt of optimism, weariness, heartbreak, and perseverance. this a book so skillful at its depictions of slavery that i was ready to release a guttural screech upon discovering the plot twist lying within the last 20-something pages.

best watches:

i like it like that (1994) — this was a humid, sticky weekend afternoon kind of watch. this movie set the tone of steamy bronx summers and dripping ice cream cones. this film, like any other family drama, gets messy, but is still laced with a desire to return home to each other.

waiting to exhale (1995) — gorgeous women. gorgeous outfits. gorgeous phoenix, arizona homes. the satiating crackle of a car on fire. watching this musing on chosen black sisterhood as an adult emphasized my love for some of the realest relationships i have.

sinners (2025) — a stunning film with layered cultural questions and answers. some of my favorite frames are towards the end when dawn breaks, and smoke hugs preacher boy while remmick is swallowed by a fiery cyclone; the blue, red, and brown tones performing a finale.

sing sing (2023) — coleman domingo means so much to me. in retrospect, watching this film on my last flight back from japan was quite the choice considering my very well-functioning tear ducts. based on a true story and very thoughtfully made, so much so that i was surprised that a24 was its distributor (if you don’t know by now, i have a quiet beef with that production company, the film moonlight, excluded.)

i love LA (2025) — i was honestly surprised by how much i enjoyed this one. the characters are cutesy and kind of vapid, and that’s exactly what they’re supposed to be. it’s parodic and absurdist, but in a way that somehow still tik-tok dances on the line of realism. i mean, it is LA that we’re talking about.

best sounds:

best of 2025 (playlist)

*i realized that i previously put 4 of these songs in the same playlist (arguably one of my best) and decided to share the apple music link for anyone that missed out when i posted it to instagram. — tryna regulate (playlist)

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till it’s done (tutu) - d’angelo and the vanguard — michael eugene archer you ain’t got no business being gone off this earth. till it’s done is an existentialist daydream, and yet, like the rest of d’angelo’s music, remains a love song; one dedicated to humanity.

stay - rufus & chaka khan — chaka khan just radiates the aura of the fun auntie who smells amazing and has a good ass time at the function; the one you can hear before she dances into the room because the sound of her jewelry clacking announces her arrival.

put it on me (live at o’darby’s) - alphonse ardoin & the zydeco kingz ft. phonsee — i need more zydeco in my life!!! i love being black and southern REAL BAD.

deja vu - beyoncé — b’day is hands down my favorite beyoncé album, so please know that there were multiple contenders for this list, including upgrade u, freakum dress, and get me bodied. her connection to her band during this era was electric. the year was 2006, and giselle was hungry for stardom.

crown royal - jill scott — SHE’S BACKKKKK! never doubt this woman’s ability to both verbally and sonically express feelings of love and desire on wax. much like auntie chaka, she looks like a one-woman party with an extensive fragrance collection.

4 kampé - joé dwèt filé — need this song administered via IV drip. please send me your favorite kompa and zouk songs if you love me and shout out to the beautiful people and culture of ayiti!!

leveled - durand bernarr — i’m so grateful that people like durand bernarr exist. to be a person who’s both so brilliantly talented yet fundamentally unserious (he and his band dressed as characters from the proud family for npr’s tiny desk) is a real gift for the rest of us.

joey labeija_better_107 bpm (joey labeija remix) - kelela & joey labeija — can always count on kelela and her collaborators to bring back real sexy girl music. get your ass on the dance floor!!!

gimme all your love - alabama shakes — brittany howard, the rockstar that you are. y’all ain’t ever crashed out over a lover before?? the time signature change at the 2:15 mark makes me feel like that meme of bobby hill (from king of the hill) ascending.

best eats:

unagi from gion unagi kawafuji in kyoto — one of the best meals i’ve ever had, and alone is worth the 18+ hour flight and 2 hour shinkansen ride from tokyo.

labneh & makdous w/ zaatar pita chips from sweet sweet syria — you can find this family business in decatur or at the peachtree road farmers market on saturdays.

my everything but the kitchen sink sandwich — a take on hailee catalano’s zucchini carrozza, but unfried and overly freaked; i promise to drop my recipe later.

every single pomegranate that i ate this fall/winter

best travel recs:

traditional home in kyoto — one of the best things about kyoto is the ability to stay in a machiya style home, complete with traditional features like a tatami room and soaking tub, and updated ones like heated floors and, of course, bidets.

t’s ink tattoo in kyoto — like any loving cat owner, you know i had to get my girl tiger tattooed on me!! rio at t’s ink in kyoto took excellent care of me. there was minimal pain and the process was quick and well-priced!

kawabatashinkyu massage clinic in tokyo — one of my biggest recommendations for travel in japan is to end your trip with some kind of spa, massage, or wellness treatment (you will be doing a LOT of walking.) i received cupping, acupuncture, moxibustion, and a cbd oil massage for around ~$115.

desert home in joshua tree, california — if you’re like me, sometimes you just gotta go to the middle of some nature for a bit, with the option to either scream or shut the hell up. i could’ve gatekept this bnb, but i didn’t (and may get chewed out by my best friend because this is really our new favorite place lolol), so please don’t blow up the spot!!

the spring resort & spa in desert hot springs, california — this spa was super cute and tucked away. we each received the spring signature relaxation massage and access to the saunas and hot spring pools for ~$150.

best acquisitions:

issey miyake pleats please top thrifted from kindal in kyoto

annette smith burgess retinal scan print from scott’s antique market

tom ford rex-02 57mm aviator sunglasses

matcha bowl & chasen holder from chef tableware

custom leather belt from shiraho kamakura in kamakura

i hope you enjoyed this selection of my favorite reads, watches, sounds, travel, eats, and acquisitions of 2025, a year that will probably need to be processed in therapy. things are far from what they should be in our world, but being able to build a life for myself riddled with silly little joys is something that i don’t take for granted. i’m forever wishing for love, protection, safety, and justice for our world, in 2025, 2026, and beyond.

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from pieramoore.substack.com, you can expect consider it this way, a reflection on my creative practice, history, spirituality, science, and the human condition, and pp’s bookclub (+ other personal interests), for notes on the books, movies, music, designs, travels, recipes, etc. that are keeping me inspired right now. i’m still on instagram (lowkey against my will) at @slumpiera, and my website for photo work is pieramoore.com. hope to have you along for the ride. <3

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