We Cover the Waterfront:

What prompted the creation of your Reiki videos?

I am a Reiki practitioner and I usually would meet with clients in person, then because of the pandemic, I couldn’t. The Reiki practitioner channels a universal life force energy through our hands typically, and usually in an in-person session. I would touch different parts of a person’s body when they would come with specific illnesses or pain that they wanted me to focus on. There are distance Reiki sessions as well, but I hadn’t done as many of them until this year when I couldn’t meet with people at all in person.

There were all of these issues coming up, so I started posting a series of Reiki videos online. Basically, you are sending a healing energy out and that’s what is happening in the videos. I am focusing on a specific intention and whoever watches that video can receive it.

I had Reiki for loneliness, for grief, for people who were physically ill etc. When George Floyd was murdered and a number of other people, and the protests started, I made a video that was Reiki for people who were frustrated with the police killings of Black people. This past summer the Brooklyn Public Library started projecting videos on the outside of their building, and they projected one of my videos.

Tell us about your Mermaid Collage Performances and how they intersect with your healing work?

The last one I did was in January of 2020, but it’s something I started doing last year. I was teaching at York college and looking at an artist named Shantell Martin, who does live drawing performances and I thought what if I did live collaging performances? I’m always looking out for ways to incorporate different aspects of my practice and bring them together and I liked this idea. I added video projection and music, which are also things I like to work with. DJing is one of my dream jobs. I have always wanted to be a DJ and this is an outlet for that.

It’s been great and there have been a few different iterations of the piece. I’ve done it four times now and each time I’ve been adding to the same collage. I’ve only worked on that piece during those performances so it isn’t finished yet. People can’t really gather, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to continue doing it. I would definitely like to continue working in that way, I really like it. A lot of times people are just passive observers and sometimes people will come closer and ask questions which is also great. It’s so new I am still trying to figure out how to navigate it and how to invite people in. It’s been really enjoyable and I’ve gotten a great response so far.

This idea of creating a free space for our imaginations is really important in terms of going to a fantasy place with the mermaids. There is a rich history of mermaids throughout Afro-Carribean folklore, African folklore and through out all the continents. Every culture has their own mermaid folklore. I really want to not only focus on trauma and tragedy. I want us to have a space for Black imagination and Black joy, not just the painful experiences. Of course we have to acknowledge the things that are painful, and we have to acknowledge the things that are difficult. But we also have to have a space where we can just imagine and have fun. In terms of the performances, that’s a way of opening up that space and inviting other people into it.

How did the zine Obeah Man Meets Fairmaid that you created with your father, Ovid S. Abrams Sr., come about?

My parents are from Guyana in South America, and I grew up hearing about Fairmaids, the Mermaids that live there. In Guyana the sea water is black and they say that the Mermaids live in the blue sea water and the Fairmaids live in the black sea water. There are certain parts of Guyana where there are a lot of sightings. People will say, even today, that they see Fairmaids swim up from the ocean to sit on rocks and comb their hair. I grew up hearing a lot of those stories and I have always had a fascination with Mermaids.

My father’s book is called Metegee: The History and Culture of Guyana and it covers a range of topics, including a lot of folklore. I decided to pair up some excerpts from his book that are about folklore with images of my work. I got a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts and it took about a year to finish. I didn’t tell him about it until after I had completed the entire thing. Once it was completed and printed I showed it to him. My father came to the launch event and he spoke, talked about the book and some of the culture – it was really great.

My father is also a minister. Both of my grandfathers were farmers in Guyana and my mother’s grandmother was a healer who would do hands on healing for women to help them with reproductive issues. I feel like I am a combination of all of that.