ANGER CLUB
THURSDAY 26 OCTOBER, 18h - 20h
One Field Fallow, Rue de l'Enseignement 62, 1000 Brussels
everything can be used / except what is wasteful / (you will need to remember this / when you are accused of destruction)
Audre Lorde, from the poem For Each of You
I’ve been getting road rage again. On my bike, while cycling through Brussels. And the violent energy that takes over me when a driver does something aggressive is scary sometimes. It’s like I’ve been handed a card saying ‘permission to be angry,’ and it just all pours out.
I’ve been thinking about the energy of anger, where it comes from and where it goes. People of marginalised genders are often socialised not to get angry. Conveniently for the powers that be. So, many of us don’t, and it transmutes into other emotions, or we turn it inwards and judge those who do not. In a year when myself and many friends and people around me have been and are experiencing sickness, burnout, fatigue, or learning to live with chronic conditions, I’ve been wondering how we create structures for sharing the emotional energy we need to get angry and stay angry, for ourselves and for each other. I mean the kind of anger that connects us rather than dividing us, one with space for acknowledging our different experiences and how we contribute to the causes of the anger of others. How do we shift how we feel and use our anger, in ways that generate energy towards change rather than drain us and those around us?
If you’d like to think about this stuff together, you are warmly welcome to join the Anger Club on Thursday 26 November. Together I’d like to try to physically map on paper the energies of our anger: where does it originate or flow from, where does it get blocked, where and when do we let it out and in what ways? What other routes or translations of our anger do we desire? Proposals of other things we might want to do together are welcome too. Or just bring yourself, your anger, and maybe a good pen. All women, trans, non-binary and gender-non-conforming folk welcome. Oh and I’ll make some soup too. Email somersdj@tcd.ie, text 0474131552, or message @someradonbelly on IG with any questions or proposals.