Brainstorm #6 - Zahra McKee

In Ceremony of Time, Patrisia Gonzales details the importance of both Western and “red” medical practices in indigenous childbirth. Cook, a midwife she interviews, covers how biomedical and spiritual knowledge are equally valued. One of the spiritual knowledge “technologies” is the use of time as medicine. Cook discusses how sacred practices like interpreting dreams and reading of ceremonial calendars create the ceremonial time that is so important for some indigenous women during childbirth. Part of this ceremonial time is an understanding of the cyclical nature of time as “time is told through the transformation of life, birth, ceremony, and dreams—all of which express laws of transformation and regeneration” (166). Ceremonial time is a resilience practice because as Gonzales put it, “the impulse of the universe to create life-giving is present in this temporal unity even when the past has created debilitating consequences” (167). Despite the difficult past, ceremonial time means that the good times will come again, which provides hope to its believers. This is similar to Girl in a Coma’s focus on redefining time by merging genres and creating music that empowers its listeners to see a new future. As Michelle Habell-Pallán describes it in Girl in a Coma Tweets Chicanafuturism, “the band renders Chicanafuturism in video format, illustrating how the past, present, and future of Tejano and rock collide in their onstage performance” (167) and their song Clumsy Sky “captures the sensation of a decolonial potentiality where subjects such as the band and their fans imagine and live in a time where their realities are valued and centered” (167). This resiliency practice of connecting to the past and imagining the future is extremely powerful and just one of the ways Girl in a Coma strengthens their community of listeners. Girl in a Coma also are active users of social media to create a modern sense of convivencia. By posting their music on Youtube or blogging on Facebook, the band “[collapses] the distance between them and their own fans” (174). This virtual convivencia is very important, something we can all appreciate during the coronavirus quarantine. But in pre-quarantine times, Girl in a Coma also encouraged real-life convivencia by bringing together people from all over with a shared interest in their music. For example, in their Clumsy Sky video, we see a man with a mohawk and an old man sitting together (0:55). Despite these two people likely living very different lives, simply being together for Girl in a Coma’s music has exemplified concvivencia.