Always Welcome is a Social Arts Salon where you don't have to be afraid to get it right to be welcomed. Hosted by Mallorie Kris Greene Kristoffersen, performance ethnographer, teaching artist, and 9th-generation Howard County, Maryland native, each episode uses lived experience and lived stories as the vessel for fostering new connections and deeper shared meanings. From conversations with family to field research across Howard County, this is an investigation into what it means to be human in a culturally complex, constantly evolving world. Pull up a chair. You are always welcome here.
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Imperfectly finding my voice and comfort, while exploring what it might take for us all to do so, welcome back to episode five of Always Welcome: A Social Arts Salon.
This is a one-week pause on the multi-part conversation with my parents, for a foundational reflection on the work of understanding and the experience of growing up curious.
Thank you for joining me at the salon! Here's to more understanding for all.
Supported by a FY26 Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant.
Hello and welcome back to the Always Welcome Podcast, a social arts salon. If you joined me last week, we entered into the beginning of a four-part conversation with Linda and Alan Green, my parents. We'll pick back up on that conversation next week, but this week I wanted to open this conversation up by zooming in on myself. As a kid, I loved wondering about the bottom of Oscar the Grouch's trash can. If you're not familiar with Sesame Street, Oscar the Grouch was a grouch who lived on Jim Henson's Sesame Street. This was one of my favorite characters to appear on screen when I was a kid. When he popped up out of the bottom of his trash can, it always felt like there was a party happening just below, out of sight. His trash can was Mary Poppin's bag turned into a living space. It seemed endless down there. I wanted to understand the goings on. I wanted to experience the music, the energy. As a kid, I just knew there was a good time being had. I recently caught myself describing how growing up I was attracted to the Riffraff. Riffraff. This crew was up to no good and most likely seen as those best to steer clear from. But there was also something about the Riffraff that made them attractively endearing. Mischievous with appeal. As I caught myself saying it, it struck me for the first time in my life, like looking at myself in a mirror, attracted to the Riffraff. The Riffrath. I'd like to think I was on the wall during recess hanging out with the Riffrath, as if I was just innocently there. And honestly, if you were to talk to any of the teachers or administration that passed by the wall that I hung out on, they surely would tell you it did not appear as though I found myself in any form of punishment. True Riffrath. I am who I am. And the gift that my parents described so vulnerably last week allowed for a daughter to enter the world of her childhood with all of the acceptance of being a kid who had consequences to her behavior. I loved Oscar the Grouch. He was who he was. I also loved Miss Frizzle. I loved Punky Brewster. Pippy Longstocking somehow survived wild waters in an old wine barrel. I was a kid who lived for the curious adventure that is this gift called life. If I got caught doing something I probably shouldn't have, there was a consequence. To this day, I am still dealing with navigating the consequences of my youth and the consequences of not living today with a more honest acceptance of all of the ranges of my talents and gifts. I'll never forget my first acting class at NYU, sitting on the floor in a circle with a wall of mirrors reflecting all of the corners of the space and all of the discomfort of my body and my face. And that first assignment we received was to go out to a park. And it was New York City, so we could take our pick and just sit and watch people. Watch them as they move. What is their story? What are you witnessing? Who are you seeing? Take note of everything. Write down this experience and bring it to class. Okay, so I'm not really sure if that was the actual assignment, but as I recall it, that's what I had to do. And I got lost in being asked to just go watch people. Unfortunately, the wall of mirrors that I found in every studio space did not usually reflect the community that would allow me to discover this me, this version of the me. But I will say that that wall of mirrors helped me to discover the value of the spaces that I aim to create today. I cannot wait for the opportunities to get into some honest riffraff, make some waves, and have fun riding them. And I've learned to discover that, like Oscar, I've never been a negative, grouchy person. I'm a person learning and living and doing my best to cause no harm to others along the way. I've always been curious, the kind of curious that allows me to give all people space to be just as mistaken in their choices as I have been in mine. I've gotten to the age where I've come to witness many people who are good and honest, who create environments that are toxic in their insecurity, their competition, their need for power, control, position, and boundaries. As a kid, I had such shame surrounding my race. I remember as a young adult learning better about my history and the legacy of those who came before me here in Howard County, Maryland, and in Southeast Washington, D.C. The lives they suffered through that made it possible for me to grow up with a sense of I am equal no matter what. Eventually I learned that others in society do not hold that value, but for a beautiful portion of my youth, the work of so many who came before me allowed me to live innocent to all that they endured. A person who should be grateful to even clean the dirt beneath another man's shoes. And if that is not done so with impeccable precision, that human has every right to be lashed and punished for the harm of their inability to do the job correctly. They should be able to live with complete fear for their existence because they are less than. It breaks my heart to think that the blood that runs through me today lives for centuries in a global system that's perceived their being as not holding all the hope and possibility I have for my son today. To live within a world where you feel safer to go unseen than to be witnessed. I want him to live in a world where all of the beauty and his complexity and the not got it quite right, but I'm figuring it out with a heart of kindness and understanding for others, that that is enough, that we are all enough so long as we are not looking to do harm to others. And that we can choose, if we do, unintentionally to make those mistakes that do need repair, that we have the possibility of still being the good, beautiful humans that we all each inherently are, no matter the mistakes that we have made. The deep systemic structural borders and boundaries that for centuries perpetrated a narrative that my family was less than worthy. And for so many, it was safer for them to go unseen, living fully in the beauty, the beautiful gift, the glory that is life here on earth. What does glory even mean today? Where do we witness it? With whom do we reserve it? When was the last time you cast assumptions on another person's worth or their motives? If you were to meet someone and have your experience of them change because you discovered something that they lived through or accomplished that you did not credit them, what was the assumption in the first encounter that led you to feel that there was a sense of being caught off guard? Have we ever realized that there is an experience that happens to those who are receiving the surprise? The experience of, I didn't know you could have, I didn't know you did, I didn't see your value. We show ourselves unknowingly. And I pray that more of us can figure out how to live and navigate a world where we live with more understanding for how we are showing up in all of the spaces that we create. And I am fully aware that I have put my foot in my mouth and will do so again. I probably have already done so today. And so if I have, thank you for still being with me. Thank you for giving me the grace to figure it out. Next week, I will bring back the continuation of the first part of the conversation with my parents. The process of sharing one's life and providing space and a platform for the vulnerable gift of their life story is one of the scariest experiences I've ever shared. Many might say I am using my parents and that it is inappropriate to put them in such a vulnerable position. The process of listening is as much about what you hear as it is about how you interpret the experience. What limitations are you bringing to what you heard? What questions have gone unanswered because an assumption was made and how something was heard or interpreted as being said? The gift of not releasing our conversation, or at least I hope, is that I'm allowing space for the process of understanding to take place, to build space for the discovery, for the uncovering, for the layers of life and identity that we all have. Thank you for being with me as I attempted to open up this social art salon. Here's to celebrating the good going on in those darkest corners of our lives, in the comment section, in the recipe reviews, in the seeds in the darkness that are just taking root to bring beauty and light and color into our lives. Thank you for being the color, the beauty that helps to make this world abundantly, unendlessly, abundantly curious in its design. Thank you for joining me on the Always Welcome Podcast, a social art salon. I am giving you and sending you all of my love, abundant curiosity. I'm Mallory Chris Green, Christofferson, over and out from Columbia, Maryland.
