Notes on D. Wood's "Living Room Self"

Thoughts and reflections on a former Danity Kane member

Theaster Gates “Bathroom Believer” (2018)

I went to see D. Woods perform at Joe’s Pub on Thursday and since have been thinking about the question the former Danity Kane member and For Colored Girls cast member posed to the audience. When people force us to appear smaller or push us to dampen our visions for ourselves, what do we do with that information? It’s a question that has come up for me a few times, as it does for most Black women anywhere. As the performance artist sang in her makeshift “living room,” she repeatedly prompted the audience to think about the self who arrives at their sanctuary, the self with a damaged inner sanctuary, and the self who wishes to repair and move through those experiences.

Yes, the performance was about Diddy. The audience—filled with Wood’s peers from various theatrical performances, colleagues from the LA music scenes, and longtime D. Woods fans—knew what was up. She played clips from the reality TV show Making the Band, where popular culture first met Woods. Within the second of a three-act performance, she loops early aughts reality TV jargon that fueled 00s diet culture over her set. Over and over, Diddy, Tyra, and other personalities comment on women’s bodies, eating patterns, and looks. One clip played Diddy threatening that “you’re just one hamburger away” from being cut from the group. Another clip of an unidentified voice admitting plans to get a girl group hooked on drugs and then pimp them out recalled allegations Aubrey O’Day told the press about before we saw the footage of Cassie.

But more than a way to respond to requests for comment, the performance shows Wood’s process for healing, rediscovering, and projecting an authentic self. She begins by healing her inner child, reconnecting with the dreams and hopes that filled her brain as a daydreaming teen. Then, she reconnects with the sensual power that exists in all women. The power that Erykah Badu, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde spoke about in their art. Finally, and personally, the most challenging part, she looks to bring that self outside.

I have been working on an essay since graduate school about the time someone accused me of performing for or making myself palatable for the white gaze. This rude remark burrowed into my psyche for years. I’ve struggled to articulate and unpack my desire to manage other’s perceptions of me. Except the essay always either sounds anxious or defensive. These topics seem disparate. On a surface level, the experiences of a Black woman in her 20s trying to make a career with a predator as a boss might not compare to a Black woman in her 20s trying to find her voice within media. However, hearing Woods perform her struggle to manage perceptions, I now wonder where I hear the echoes of that Taylor and how exactly I even moved through those perceptions.

Theaster Gates created a model dingy bathroom to honor the space where his mom gathered her strength and restored her soul. I saw “Bathroom Believer” at the conceptual artist’s New Museum show in 2022. Nearly a dozen fluorescent bar lights illuminated the hexagon rosette mosaic tile. The setup reminds me of the flooring in my grandmother’s bathroom, but the lighting from a sketchy motel or public transit restroom. In an exhibition about sacred spaces, Gates created a place where people could experience vulnerability and strength.

I am struggling to imagine my sanctuary. Reflexively, I would say my childhood bedroom. But now, as an adult in a new apartment, I haven’t been able to recreate that feeling in my new bedroom. Also, metaphorically, I wonder about these spaces more culturally for Black women where we collectively can exist without performing for the gaze.

Maybe it’s less about a specific room or address but more about a set of physical, emotional, spiritual, and communal parameters a space meets. So, Woods can tap into her Living Room Self by filling a space with the songs, moves, and sounds that filled her living room. The stereo blasting “I Think We’re Alone Now” or an Erykah Badu song, TV on the latest trashy reality TV, friends close by to dish the latest gossip, cute pajamas, and dancing on the couch.

In the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé, practitioners do not create a religious sanctuary by laying bricks or stone or the erection of a steeple for a new church or temple. During the period of enslavement, worshippers hid their practices from Portuguese landowners. Instead, they arranged a collection of figurines representing the orishas, flowers, candles, and other artifacts to transform any room into a sanctuary. A new place appeared because the people and materials alchemized an ordinary multipurpose room.

For Black women in the Americas who must hide parts or all of themselves from the world for safekeeping, sanctuary cannot be a specific place but a set of rituals. Looking towards my essay, I would probably add to Wood’s prompt.

When people force us to appear smaller or push us to dampen our visions for ourselves, what do we do with that information? Where do we go? And what rituals must we perform to exorcise those demons?

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