Episode 8: Liel Green

This week I have the pleasure of featuring my friend, Liel Green. They interviewed me in the third episode and I'm so glad you get to hear some of their personal thoughts, too. Their thesis project "Anticipatory Illuminations:" The Performance of the Jewish Sabbath as Queer Futurity is about the badass world-building power that queers have to transform the present and mess with time through the ways they love, feel, and live & how Shabbos and diaspora are part of that magic! Email liel.c.green@gmail.com for a copy~~ they would love to share&dream&scheme with you!

Music by Home Despot, who is on Spotify here and Patreon here

Some definitions from our conversation:

Bimah: the elevated platform in a synagogue or sanctuary where Torah is read and services are led from.

JRFREJ: Jews for Racial and Economic Justice has pursued racial and economic justice in New York City by advancing systemic changes that result in concrete improvements in people’s everyday lives.

Frum: religiously devoted, living life by following Halakha.

Binder: a compression vest or shirt worn to flatten the chest, often worn by trans men and trans masculine people (but also people of many other identifications) in order to reduce body dysphoria.

Olam Ha'ba: the world to come, post-Messianic world

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions: novel by Larry Mitchell

Tourmaline: Black trans artist, activist, and filmmaker known especially for her work highlighting and honoring Marsha P. Johnson. 

Hiddur Mitzvah: the mitzvah of making Judaica and Jewish practice aesthetically appealing. 

Etrog: yellow citrus fruit used to celebrate Sukkot, often very expensive.

Shokeling: in Yiddish, to shake, a style of swaying and moving whilst praying.

José Esteban Muñoz: queer theorist, famous for his books Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics and Cruising Utopia: the Then and There of Queer Futurity.

With any questions or comments, email me at emma@advahdesigns.com

 

Fringes Podcast Transcript

Transcript by Tim Hipp at www.transcribeyourpod.com

Episode 8

Emma June:Hello. I’m Emma June, and welcome to Fringes, a no frills kind of podcast where I talk to trans and gender non-conforming Jews about our experiences with tallitot and tzitzit. Tallitot are Jewish prayer shawls and tzitzit are the knotted fringe on the end of them. For deeper definitions, check out the first episode. A small warning, this episode joyously uses a slur for gay men, and this episode features my longtime friend Liel Green, who will introduce themself.

Liel Green: Yeah, so my name is Liel. I use they/them pronouns. I’m currently based in Northampton, Massachusetts. Yeah, and I’m currently working on a project that I’m feeling very excited about with queer and Jewish futurity, so building queer Jewish futures, and what are mechanisms in queerness and in Jewishness that help us imagine futures that kind of say that queers and Jews and the intersection between the two where people of and for the future. Yeah, and then I think a lot of that is gonna be connected to what I’m gonna say today on this podcast. Yeah. And anything else about myself? I really like wearing glitter on Shabbos. Yeah. Those things feel all very connected.

Emma June:  Awesome. Can I ask quickly, is your project an academic project?

Liel Green: Yes, yes. Well, it’s an academic project that I’m really excited about making less academic, and about kind of opening it up to be more than just that, so stay tuned for that.

Emma June:  Great. We will with great excitement. Okay. Well, as with most people, I think an approach that I really like to take is to just kind of begin at the beginning and remember back to what your first memories are of tallitot and tzitzit, like where you saw them, how you felt about them, what you learned about them.

Liel Green: Yeah. I think definitely the first person that I have a memory of specifically wearing a tallit is my mom. She’s a cantor, and so just at services or ritual events, I think she was the person wearing the tallit, and so yeah, definitely kind of have very warm and fuzzy memories of kind of running around and hiding, me and my twin kind of like hiding underneath her tallit while she’s kind of like on the bimah, which was a little enclosure. This may be a little embarrassing for her, but yeah, and I think my dad. My dad sometimes wore one, too, so we would be kind of like more in the pews, and kind of just like playing around with it, and we’d try it on and stuff. But yeah, definitely my mom.

Emma June:  Whoa. Can I ask what setting your mom was a cantor in? Like did a lot of people and a lot of women wear tallitot? Or was she kind of alone on the bimah?

Liel Green: Yeah. I’d say that she was… I think she was probably pretty alone in that at the congregation where she worked when I was growing up. It was a Reform congregation, so I don’t think that many people, in fact, maybe some men who grew up more traditionally or just knew that that was a thing that they were supposed to do in like a compulsory sense, were doing that. Yeah.

But yeah, I think I had a pretty mishmash religious growing up experience, so my mom was a Reform cantor, and so I kind of… When I was younger, like when I was in middle school and high school already, I kind of stopped going to that specific… To like the shuls that she worked at more frequently, but so grew up in Reform congregation, and then I went to a conservative Jewish day school, and then in high school I was briefly part of an Orthodox youth group, and then joined the Jews For Racial & Economic Justice Youth Brigade, and then was kind of introduced to the circles and community that I’m more comfortable and a part of now.

So, definitely different… You see different people wearing tzitzits and a tallit in each different sphere. But definitely seeing my mom on the bimah… Yeah, I think it was more symbolic, or I think for her it’s like part of her practice, but it wasn’t necessarily a norm for all the women to be wearing it.

Emma June:  Yeah. Do you wear a tallis or do you wear tzitzit?

Liel Green: Yeah, I do, and I think… I think it definitely varies for me how often or when and it really depends on where I’m at. You know, which physical location I am in. Yeah. I think there’s days where it has definitely fluctuated. I think usually when I daven, I always wear a tallit. And yeah, in my brain I’m also kind of going back and forth between tallit and tallis, and them having… I feel like I’m pausing before I’m saying those words. My mom says tallit, so I think I grew up with like the Hebrew, and then kind of when I got involved in more from circles a bit, and which in some ways is actually the way that I feel most comfortable davening, kind of switched to tallis, and then… Yeah, so I think I’m just going back and forth in my head a bit, but it’s all true, and all different, and not a thing.

Yeah, so I think whenever I daven, I do wear a tallis, and in terms of tzitzits, I… Yeah. I think it kind of depends on how brave I’m feeling or where I am, or I don’t know. Yeah, I think it depends on a lot, but there have been points where I’ve worn them every day, and there have been points where I don’t wear it, where I kind of employ them as something special for myself. Or if I know I’m gonna be around other people wearing it, and it feels kind of safe or also kind of like… I don’t know. More of a communal thing. It feels good to wear things with other people. I kind of love having matching outfits and that’s…

Emma June:  Yeah. Can you talk some about what makes them feel special for you?

Liel Green: Yeah. Yeah. I think when I wore my first pair of tzitzits, it was before I started wearing a binder, before I really started thinking more significantly about transness. Yeah, and for me, like wearing tzitzits was like my first binder, and I feel like that’s kind of like a common thread that I’ve heard of that or have read amongst queer Jews, specifically transmasc Jews. But I think it works for a lot of different people in different ways and is a fun way to play with gender. Yeah. I think that yeah, I put it on and it really… I think it’s a significant that it goes over the chest, and that it definitely brought up a lot, or definitely I looked at myself in the mirror and was like, “Whoa, this is how I want to look.” Or I felt really… I feel like I felt really cool, or I was just like, “Yes, this feels really good.”

The same way that I feel like when I was in kindergarten, I had this like black sweater from the boy section with like a white star on it, and I remember just wearing that, and I had this cute pair of sunglasses, and I’d put on those specific items of clothing and just like feel really cool. And I feel like it kind of brought up the same… I don’t know. I feel like there was a moment of emergence. I feel like there’s… I like to think about different items of clothing or just like different experiences as like portals, and I think that wearing tzitzits or wearing like a tallis is definitely like a portal moment. Moments of emergence, of transformation.

And I’m not sure, I think the initial time I wore it, like wearing it for the first time, I don’t really know if I was super aware of what that portal was or what emergence was happening, but it definitely felt significant. Yeah, and then I got a binder for the first time and then wore my binder with the tzitzits. That was kind of like the immediate step, that you know, after trying the binder for the first time, you’re like, “Oh my God.” It was wild. Yeah.

Yeah, and then put the tzitzits on top of it and I was like… It felt extra affirming, or… Yeah. I still think it feels extra affirming wearing both, because I think it’s ritual. Yeah, and what ritual does is I think ritual transforms, or like ritual kind of performs the world that you want, the experience that you want, you’re like actively creating for me, like you’re actively creating your like your Olam Ha’ba, your world to come, or just like the future world that you desire in ritual, and I think that’s like for me, like thinking about portals, thinking about transformation, thinking about all that, are very connected.

Emma June:  Right. And they come together in this. On this one object. Yeah. Well, I think it’s really amazing and inspiring to me the way that you let clothes matter instead of pushing them aside as kind of like a frivolous thing, and I think that kind of a tallis or a tallit katan as an object is one way of Judaism affirming the value of clothing, and of layers, and-

Liel Green: Yeah. Layers.

Emma June:  … and accessories in certain ways. And I’m curious if you could talk about how maybe those things relate to being trans? If that question makes sense.

Liel Green: Totally. Actually, I just got up to grab a book. It’s called Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, and I’m just looking for a quote from it that I feel like I would really like to read if that’s okay.

Emma June:  For sure.

Liel Green: Just one second. Yeah, so it’s this book that’s called The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, and it’s like this kind of fantasy story with really gorgeous illustrations that’s about how the faggots and their community, so like the faggots, and the fairies, and the women who love women, and the queens all basically, you know, are like… lead a revolution against the men, who kind of represent everyone in power, everything in power, everything that is an oppressor. And so, it’s kind of about this coalition of the oppressed revolting against the oppressors, but they’re doing this in a really beautiful way that’s about building chosen family, and strong community, and feeling a lot of pleasure, and having a lot of sex, and just like really tapping into all that is pleasure and all that is love, and what can kind of come out of that when you do let yourself feel desire and be vulnerable with other people.

And that was written by Larry Mitchell in the 1970s, I believe. Yeah, 1977. And then there’s a recent edition that was released in July of 2019, so super recent, that has a preface by Tourmaline. Yeah. And so, there’s a quote from Tourmaline’s introduction that’s responding to… So, the initial quote that Tourmaline is responding to is a quote that says, “The queens display infinite weirdness to the world. For them, style is the path into the unique self, and so to transcendence. They long for everyone to reveal themselves wherever they are.” And then Tourmaline writes, “It took me a long time to come back to the power and logic of image, art, fashion, aesthetics, and not least of all, glamour. The faggots helped me find my way back. The faggots reminded me that superficiality, style, messiness, and play are not bad things. They’re transformative ways of being. Our glamour is not superfluous to changing the current order. It is instrumental.”

So, those are not exactly my words to answer your question, but they’re definitely how I feel.

Emma June:  Are there ways that you feel like you’ve found to feel glamourous through tzitzit?

Liel Green: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I think it definitely… Yeah, and it’s this kind of really deep glamour. I think about the idea of hiddur mitzvah, which is… It’s making a mitzvah even holier, even more beautiful for your aesthetic, I think is the more… most basic explanation. How I, I think, understand it, and I think that that idea can manifest, can also be super classist, or can kind of… You know how like Judaica is super expensive.

Emma June:  Yeah.

Liel Green: Or you know, you’re always looking for the nicest thing, or like the nicest etrog. And a lot of that, that leads to just like those who have more money can afford the nicer things, which means that they’re like performing the mitzvah in a holier way, and I think that there’s been really awesome queer interpretations of hiddur mitzvah to kind of just be like… to kind of move it away from that idea and kind of say like what are we… How are we superfluous and how is that divine? How are we extra? How are we glamorous? And how is that holy? And so, I think that… Yeah, that definitely feels a bit glamorous, wearing a tallis or tzitzits. And I think that that glamorous is euphoria. I don’t think it has to look a specific way. I think it’s like… You know, people talk about gender euphoria, and I think it’s gender euphoria, and I think there’s just an added layer of also like I’m euphoric and I’m divine, or I’m connecting to the divine, or I’m figuring out how to connect to Hashem through me performing gender, or just like wearing the things that I want to be wearing.

Yeah, and I think… I don’t know. It’s interesting. We were talking a bit before and you were talking about how you got a tallis like when you were bat mitzvahed, and how I think you were saying how you didn’t really like it. Is that what you were saying? You want to put your words in that?

Emma June:  Yeah. I just feel pretty unenthusiastic about it.

Liel Green: Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I definitely resonate with that. I think I got to choose a tallis and I think at the time, it was one, like I didn’t really have… I couldn’t just choose from any of them. I think I had a specific pool that I could choose from and I’m very grateful to have this used one, and it’s definitely a gorgeous tallis, and I don’t think I would ever in my life wear it right now. It’s kind of blue, and it’s one of the smaller ones, and it has like… It has these plastic colorful circle tassels on the bottom.

Emma June:  Oh, wow.

Liel Green: Yeah. I think it’s pretty glamorous, for sure. Not my style, but I think I did like it in sixth grade. But then I went to a Jewish school for middle school, elementary school, and we also kind of got to choose our own tallises, and yeah, and it was cool because… So, like I had the one that I got from my family, and then I was able to kind of choose another one, and granted, they weren’t as nice, and a lot of people kind of got… They got the white ones and then just tie dyed them, so that was also like the sixth grade move, for sure, to tie dye them. But I picked one that I actually… It’s the one that I wear and the one that I actually really like.

And it’s kind of bigger and more masculine, and I think at the time… I don’t know. It’s really cool when your like past self is very in tune with your future self. I think that’s something that I feel very grateful for those moments. They feel like moments of alignment. And that was… So, the one that I wear now, that I actually feel real comfortable wearing, and I think a lot of that is also what am I trying to emulate and who am I trying to emulate, and what feels authentic, and what doesn’t, and what aligns with my gender and the way that I… Even when I stand, or move, when I daven, as opposed to the ways I don’t feel comfortable doing that, and in some ways wearing a tallis makes all that feel a bit safer, to try things within that… the space of the tallis.

You know, you’re able to kind of… There’s a certain, I feel in some ways a certain suspension of whatever I need to be suspended. So, like suspension of things where like… things that I don’t want kind of are not in that sphere, and also like my body feels a bit suspended in air. Or different space. And doesn’t feel as heavy or as aware, and is able to kind of… and some of that is like my body’s literally hiding, and I think that feels good, and also… So, I think like wearing a tallis and kind of like… It kind of can add or enhance my body, and I think in some ways it could also… So, in terms of glamour or like accessory, I feel like an accessory, and also I think it has the potential to also kind of detract or take away in a way that feels really good sometimes. In a way that’s kind of healing, like you don’t always want to be aware of your body.

Yeah. I think that I was sitting next to one of my friends who’s trans and we were just talking, and then I remember they said something about how mindfulness is really hard for them, like mindfulness stuff. And I don’t think I really connected that, and then I was like, “Oh yeah, I wonder why that is.” And then they were like, “Oh yeah, it’s because I’m trans.” And I think like I… Yeah. I don’t quite… I don’t have quite the same relationship to mindfulness, but I think that sometimes deep, embodied things can be really hard, kind of bring up a lot of things and I think that a tallis, like as davening is a deep… at least for me is a very deep, embodied action… I like shokeling a lot. It feels like I’m kind of like moving towards something that I want to go towards when I do it, and I think that wearing a tallis kind of makes me feel safer to do that. 

Emma June:  Wow. Is there something… Do you have like a… I mean, maybe one you have is already, but like a dream tallis?

Liel Green: Yeah. I don’t think my tallis is my dream tallis. I’m very open. I feel like it’s like a gameshow, like, “What’s your dream house?” Like, “What’s your dream tallis?” I love that. My dream tallis. I think like a lot of… Honestly, I will say the ADVAH tallises are really nice. So, I think maybe it would be… Maybe my dream tallis is even in stock. But I don’t know. I think a lot of color, a lot of warm colors, for sure. I like the kind of wovenness. I like the bigness of it, too. I like when I can fit underneath it. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m too big, so it’s nice to feel something bigger than me on me.

Yeah. I’m not sure. It’s a really good question. Yeah.

Emma June:  Yeah. I guess I’m just… I feel really excited to do the work of imagining like what would feel, like what feels like the way we can have the most access to ritual objects that kind of… I don’t know. I’m hearing you say like I picked out one that was really not good for me now, and one that is pretty good for me now, but you know, like I don’t know, it feels like unless… I know some people, I guess mostly people who are rabbinical students, or who are just coming into their Judaism now, or something… maybe are buying tallitot at this point in their lives, but I know that a young me was not thinking deeply about my future self in a way that now I’m kind of… I know I think about it like, “Well, I already have one. I shouldn’t have another.” Except that I don’t love mine and I’m curious, I guess all I’m saying is I like the imagining, and that that’s how we get to create what doesn’t yet exist.

Liel Green: Absolutely. Yeah. I think… Yeah, a lot of the work that I’m doing right now is visioning queer Jewish futures, so it feels very appropriate. Yeah, and I think like a big thing for me is like… I don’t know. I think of myself, I think back to myself as like a queer child and a Jewish child, and I think those things were very linked, like… I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to be older. It’s a thing that I’ve felt and I still definitely feel, and part of that is just having been in community with older people and kind of always feeling like the youngest there, or always wanting to feel more integrated, and a lot of that is probably just like a lot of internalized adultism, and I’m very aware of that and very excited to do the work to kind of like amend that.

But I think that like my… I always wanted to be older, and I think that’s also a way that a lot of queer children have felt, because I think it’s like the future is a place where we feel liberated, where we could do the things that we want to do and be the way that we want to be, and wear the things that I want to wear, and all that good stuff. And for me, like me imagining myself older felt very, very Jewish, or I had this like… Yeah. I really, like until… I don’t know, maybe middle school, or even like mid-high school, I feel like when I would think about myself in the future, I’d think about myself with a girlfriend, holding her hand at shul on a Friday night.

Emma June:  That is so cute.

Liel Green: Yeah, and that was like for me, like the hottest, most romantic date, was like a Shabbat date to shul, was like what truly made me swoon. And that was like from as young as I could remember, that’s like what I wanted. Or you know, like to wear a tallis, or to… You know, it just was like that was kind of how I saw myself in the future, and I think that, and I still kind of feel that way, and why I do the work that I do, or I’m interested in doing the work that I do is the desire to kind of stop feeling so far away from my future self. I think I hold myself against the standard of what I wanted to be in the future, who I want to be, how I want to look, knowing that how I will look will change significantly, or like I would like it to change significantly.

And you know, who I want to be in a relationship with, how do I want to be in a relationship with people? And feeling a lot of frustration and a lot of hurt around how I’m not quite where I want to be yet. How I’m not quite at the future that I want and so the work that I feel myself doing personally and academically is the work of collapsing time, and I think that Judaism and queerness have really powerful technologies for doing that. It’s the work of collapsing time so that one, that’s on a basic level so that I could feel that the future that I desire, the future self that I want, the future world that I want is… It only exists in this present. There’s like fragments of… For me, it’s Olam Ha’ba, the world to come, that are in the present and kind of letting myself soften into that and kind of feel that, like what does it feel like to have the future that I want already here?

I think like Shabbats really offers that presentness in Olam Ha’ba in a very literal way, and I think that ritual objects can… I was talking about portals, and emergence and transcendence before, but I think that ritual objects are definitely portals to Olam Ha’ba, to this future world. And so, I think that my thinking, imagining the future… Yeah, and as a child imagining the future was… It was like my queerness and Jewishness would be able to be liberated and kind of like in full fruition, and I think that clothing, and different objects, and I also like just collect a lot of little things. I feel like I have a lot of little knickknacks and little… I just keep a lot of twigs, and pipe cleaners, rhinestone gems, and just like random things I kind of find on the street and shove in my pockets, and it feels like a very childish thing that I still do, just like collecting things, but I feel like those are like… I think objects can really help transport you and I feel like kind of treasures from the past and from the future, which for me are sometimes the same thing. They are very intimately connected. So, I think that wearing tzitzits and wearing a tallis can feel like that.

Yeah. It’s like me from the future, but in the present, so it’s just me, so it’s like collapsing that time. Does that make sense?

Emma June:  It does. I just feel touched, so I’m being quiet, which is… You know, a great response as an interviewer.

Liel Green: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Emma June:  Wow. That’s just very… I feel very moved by the idea that putting on this object can bring you in touch with your past and future selves or collapse you into oneself.

Liel Green: Yeah, and I think of that in also very… in the literal sense of like fabric, kind of the fluidity of fabric. Yeah. I think there’s something there too, and something about weaving as well, or like webs, and there’s just… There’s something that’s being connected or that’s in alignment, I feel. I don’t know. Those are kind of just fragments. I feel like there’s something there too.

Emma June:  Yeah. I mean, even just like the fabric of time, if you’re talking about time.

Liel Green: Yeah. For sure.

Emma June:  I know it’s an English phrase, but-

Liel Green: The fabric of time.

Emma June:  A tallis is the fabric of time.

Liel Green: Yeah. The old American idiom.

Emma June:  Deeply rooted. Anyway, yeah, that’s really special, or like a really… Oh, words are hard. It’s pretty early. Yeah. Well, I guess I’m just wondering if there are any lingering thoughts you have or questions I didn’t ask you that you want to answer?

Liel Green: Yeah. I think just like aesthetics can be something that are so difficult. I think that there’s definitely a lot of pressure to not… So, there’s like two levels of pressure where I feel like there’s pressure from like larger, mainstream, hegemonic society to kind of like care a lot about how you look. That really matters. And there’s all that stuff, and it feels really toxic sometimes, and it’s really hard, and it’s hard to situate yourself into that when you don’t look the way that you’re “supposed to” look. And then I feel like there’s kind of counter pressure to not care about how you look and to not really value aesthetics, or to kind of like… it’s this kind of like natural beauty that’s really emphasized. And then, and I think when you’re… I’m in a place right now where I can’t necessarily wake up and walk out the door and feel 100% with how I look. I kind of feel like I have to put a lot of effort, not a ton of effort, but just like I need to do some things to kind of be able to walk out the door and feel represented, and feel in alignment, feel like I look the way that I want to look to myself and to others.

And I think I’ve definitely kind of felt shame around that. But I don’t necessarily have the kind of, “Yeah, I can just backpack around,” and you know, like not shower, and feel great, and look hot, and like… You know, like wear whatever I want to wear and not care and I’m still beautiful, and you know, like I haven’t really felt that. So, this is kind of like a rambley thing, so maybe don’t put all of this in. I just think that aesthetics for trans people is really, really crucial, and I think that’s like… Yeah, as someone who identifies as transmasc and specifically more butch, it’s something that I really learned and love so much from femmes in my life, something that I really owe to the femmes in my life is kind of teaching me about glamour. You know, the glamour that I was talking about before, teaching me about how much pleasure I can get from putting glitter on my face, from like even wearing a t-shirt that feels really good.

Yeah. I think that’s something that I feel so, so in debt to, and so… It feels like so much of the love I’ve received from the femme-identifying people in my life is these valuable pearls of wisdom around how to be too much. And that I’m allowed to be too much. And that too much is actually like what makes you feel enough. And a lot of that I think is connected to aesthetics, and is connected to accessorizing, and sometimes I feel like wearing tzitzits makes me feel too much. Whether that’s too Jewish. I think a lot of times it’s definitely too Jewish, especially in kind of more… I’m definitely around a lot of queer Jews, but it’s not… I think it’s a tension that I’ve definitely felt, where the community that I feel more personally and politically comfortable in are not the communities where I’m necessarily able to daven in the ways that I want to daven.

And so, I definitely feel like sometimes I have to like tone down the way I daven or tone down certain aspects of my femme-ness. And a lot of that is like no one is telling you to do that, but it’s definitely self-imposed pressure. And I will blame Christian hegemony for some of that, as well. I will always blame Christian hegemony for a lot of it. And-

Emma June:  Absolutely.

Liel Green: Yeah. So, I think that I lost my train of thought… Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m just trying to figure out how to be unapologetically Jewish and unapologetically queer, and what does that look like together? And then in some ways, I don’t quite know what that looks like, because you don’t necessarily have that… You know, performance study scholar José Esteban Muñoz talks about in his work about the queer future, how queer futurity is that we don’t necessarily know yet what queerness looks like. It’s not quite here, but it’s present in these fragments of futurity, of the future, which I was talking about before. I’m definitely inspired by his work.

And so, I think that unapologetic queerness and unapologetic Jewishness, they’re not quite here yet, but I think we see them, we feel them in present moments, and I think those are the moments where you’re kind of transported into the future, or the future is collapsed into the present, and into the past, and I think that’s the power of ritual objects, is feeling those fragments in the future. And so, I don’t know, maybe in the future everyone’s gonna wear tzitzits and like a tallis. I have no idea, but I think seeing ritual objects as… You know, you think about the word artifact, you think about something super ancient, and I mean they are extremely ancient. I think that’s part of their spiritual potency, is the ancientness of it.

And also, I think there’s artifacts from the future, as well.

Emma June:  Wow. Well, thank you for sharing so deeply, and personally, and thoughtfully with me today, Liel.

Liel Green: Yeah. Absolutely.

Emma June:  It’s been a real pleasure and I can’t wait to do it again sometime.

Liel Green: Yes. I’m so excited for the future.

Emma June:  It’s imminent.

Liel Green: It’s imminent. It’s emerging.

Emma June: All right.

Emma June:  Thanks for listening to Fringes, my passion project supported by ADVAH Designs. For more definitions, as well as a transcription of the episode, please check out the show notes on our website, ADVAHDesigns.com/FringesEpisode8. That’s A-D-V-A-H-D-E-S-I-G-N-S dot com/F-R-I-N-G-E-S-E-P-I-S-O-D-E-8. As always, the interviews I do and the stories I get to share through this podcast cannot possibly capture the breadth of experiences in the world. I’m inevitably leaving people out. That said, this project is growing. If your story feels left out and you want to share it, please reach out to me at emma@advahdesigns.com. That’s E-M-M-A at A-D-V-A-H-D-E-S-I-G-N-S.com. This podcast is coming out on a biweekly basis. Thanks to my producer, Sarah Resnick, and to Home Despot, talented musician behind our intro. And thank you for listening. See you in two weeks wherever podcasts can be found.