Healings FAQ No. 9, Kambui Olujimi
"You can die slipping on a piece of ice, as the saying goes. This is the time we have. Don't waste it."
Anyone out there run long distances? I’m not sure if I technically qualify as a “marathoner,” because I only ran one once, about 15 years ago (Big Sur, it was awesome), but I ran a half-marathon last year, just a couple months before I found out I had cancer, which means I probably had cancer while I was running the damn thing and didn’t even know it. Crazy.
Anyway, like I said I’m no Murakami, but I’ve still spent a good chunk of my adult life in running shoes. I took it up in high school, not as part of the track team or anything, but simply because it seemed like it might be fun, and so I kept doing it, Forrest Gump-style, and since then running’s been one of the few constants in my life. Back when I was a practicing alcoholic, I’d force myself to run hungover (this was easier in my twenties; it became impossible in my thirties). When I traveled a lot for work, I’d run in whatever city I was in—Montreal, Frankfurt, Austin, and all up and down New York. Last year, as a side effect from chemo, I experienced neuropathy in my feet (numbness, pain) and my oncologist told me it's possible I might have to give up running. But I’ve basically willed myself back into it these last few months, and now I’m back to running 3-4 days a week. It’s fantastic.
I’m taking the long route to get to a simple point, which is this: Running is kind of like producing this newsletter. When I’m on a run, there’s a progression of moods. At first, your body just needs time to adjust to the stress it’s under, all the pounding, and you’re really focused on what’s going on—how are my feet? How are my knees? Am I keeping up a good pace? Why did I decide to do this thing that is painful? At some point, though, this stuff melts away. Your body adjusts to what’s going on, your endorphins ramp up, and you find the pocket.
That’s kind of where I’m at in the evolution of Healings. Believe it or not, we’ve reached the one-year anniversary of the first post. When I started this project, I had no idea how long I’d keep it going (I had no idea about a lot of things, given I was near the beginning of my cancer treatment). And initially, putting everything together was kind of a bear; I’d sometimes spend a week writing one essay (they stretched to 2,500 words back then), and at the outset we used to do these animations (blessings to the dearly departed Abner Clouseau). Today, we’re up to two posts a week and the operation is relatively streamlined. In running terms, there’s a base layer of fitness, an established routine. The weekly maintenance runs have gotten easier, but now there are bigger questions arising, such as “What are we training for?” Like, are we trying to run a marathon here? Are we trying to qualify for the Olympics?
Spoiler alert: I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know I’m starting to feel a bit restless, and so I guess this is perhaps my long way of saying I might be doing some experimenting in the coming months. For now, I suppose I’ll do the thing I rarely do and just pause to give myself a little credit for taking things this far. 1… 2… 3…
Now I have an important question for the Healings Readership (in the name of the aforementioned experimentation), which I will pose to ya’ll, survey style:
Alright, now that we have all that out of the way, let’s move on to something slightly more coherent: a bonus Healings FAQ. For anyone who needs a refresher, the Healings FAQ is our recurring series where I pose the same six questions about faith and death to various writers, musicians, artists, and whoever else strikes my fancy. The reason I ask these questions is because they’re the ones that were posed to me repeatedly by friends and occasionally strangers in the wake of my cancer diagnosis. Does one need to have cancer to contemplate these questions? Absolutely not. Hence this series.
Today’s contestant is Brooklyn-born-and-raised interdisciplinary artist Kambui Olujimi. Unlike many of our previous contestants, who provided very long answers despite my emphasizing that’s not strictly necessary (I guess that’s what happens when you ask someone whether they believe in god), Kambui offers brief but playfully cryptic answers below, and I’m guessing that’s because he’s pouring like 99.99% of his energy into creating art and/or riding the rocketship of a career said art has resulted in.
To wit: Kambui sent me these answers shortly after returning from Basel, Switzerland, where he’s part of the “When We See Us” exhibition at the Kunstmuseum, and he’s currently prepping for an exhibition of paintings from his North Star series at the San Jose Museum of Art later this year. And that’s on top of recent exhibits and performances at the Whitney, LACMA, and Lincoln Center.
Kambui’s work—which spans painting, video, photography, sculpture, and performance—defies easy categorization. But I always find it to be bold, humorous, and unsettling all at once, as in North Star, for which he was somehow able to commission of one of those airplanes that simulate weightlessness, allowing him to capture “Black bodies floating joyfully in zero gravity environments, their figures blooming into one another through prismatic refraction.” These images became the basis of a set of paintings, videos, and installations that continue to evolve. Pretty rad.
Alright, so big Thank You to Kambui for taking the time to jot these down, and hope you enjoy.
What happens when we die?
It depends on who you ask. Some people say they play all your best memories on a loop. Some people say it's like the last minute ticket line at Coachella. I think it's probably some kind of live action/ choose your own adventure/ Sleep No More with a lot of incense and a lot of bad performances dedicated to your name.
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being terrified and 1 being it’s never crossed your mind, how afraid are you of dying? Explain.
Like .5. It's never really crossed my mind once I figured out it's never gonna happen.
What’s the closest you’ve come to death? What did you learn, if anything?
A few times, yes, and I realized you can die slipping on a piece of ice, as the saying goes. And also, this is the time we have. Don't waste it.
Do you believe in God? Explain.
I just think chaos doesn't look this organized.
Do you have a spiritual practice? If so, what is it? If not, why not?
Sports. Art. Gambling on rain drops. Always touch the tiger's tail. Make your luck whenever you can.
Give me an example of a sacred text, for you personally—a work of some kind (book, album, song, painting) that’s essential to the formation of your spiritual worldview. Explain.
These are secrets so I wouldn't speak them out loud.
This is the Healings Newsletter. We thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, why not share it with a friend, or better yet buy them a gift subscription.
Healings is written by Garrett Kamps and edited by Tommy Craggs. Ayana H. Muwwakkil provides art direction.
Healings is about illness, recovery, spirituality, and related topics, and began in the summer of 2023 as a chronicle of Garrett’s battle with cancer. We make no guarantees that it will hold together, thematically speaking, now or ever.
Healings is free for all, but if you can support our efforts with a paid subscription, we’d really appreciate that. A portion of all proceeds goes to the Patient Advocate Foundation.
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