ALL THESE THINGS: A CONVERSATION by Sharon Bridgforth and Daniel Alexander Jones
 
In June 2022, Sharon Bridgforth and Daniel Alexander Jones held an intimate and searching conversation about the pragmatics of making art and engaging the communities--living and ancestral--from which their work emerges. In this edited transcript of that conversation, the two longtime friends reflect on Bridgforth’s bull-jean & dem/dey back, a collection of two performance/novels written twenty-two years apart about the eponymous bull-jean. Bridgforth details the weave between her early work in social justice (based in Austin, TX, where she and Jones met), her artmaking, her commitment to community, and how the desire to love, heal and live in truth has compelled her writing and her life choices. For Bridgforth, writing starts in the marrow of her healing. Together, through this conversation, Jones and Bridgforth offer tested strategies for living a grounded artistic life.