First Wednesday that was not a drive to work. It's Yani’s first week out and she reflects on how the body responds when survival mode lifts. Panic attacks, all the voices, the questions. And then how it shifts.

We open on the practical stuff: AI tools, task lists, scheduling systems, what works for a neurospicy brain and what absolutely does not. Shaah ran a test comparing the same prompt across three different Claude setups and has been thinking about how what you put in shapes what you get out. The TiT episode production workflow is almost fully delegatable at this point.

Then Yani plays something. An AI-generated cover of a Michael Jackson song that found its way into her ears uninvited. We both hated it. The problem was not just that it existed.

The conversation opens into what AI music actually looks like when it is used with intention: conversations Shaah had with two artists the week before, including how AI helped someone process something traumatic and how another artist was using it to genuinely expand what was possible. The use cases exist. The misuse does too. Both get space here.

From there, Shaah brings up something we were working through the night before: mission. Not the branding version. The actual version. Yani traces hers from watching people respond to her movement, how the room alive after her first aerial performance and a complicated internal conversation about impact, ownership, and the weird cultural rule that says someone else can call you great but you cannot. She unpacks that, follows it somewhere honest, and arrives at something she has been carrying since she was young: the pressure to be a role model, and how she railed against it, and why she stands by that, and what she actually feels responsible for now.

Thoughts in Transit is part of the House of Fluid Reflections creative ecosystem.

Find us:

Patreon: patreon.com/houseoffluidreflections

Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2TSLB0M1bkITSbBQc7JeYU

Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thoughts-in-transit/id1895013301

YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5x4SwGtMZbjCF3axu1E2NyIQ9rVOs8K

houseoffluidreflections.com

The past couple of weeks have been a lot. Yani's showcase. Decisions made and plans set in motion around her exit from her job. The habits and systems Shaah has been building quietly crashed as his focus shifted to making sure Yani was good. Not a complaint. That's the nature of marriage, partnership, family. Healthy relationships in general. We pause the outside world to nurture the one within.

The Trigger Word held the spot last week. This episode is where they catch up.

In this episode: Shaah hit a major milestone and got on the mic in the new studio with someone else in the room for the first time in over 20 years, since Tha Beggas (also credited as The Beggaz and The Beggarz on two different Wu-Tang albums). They also open a gift from Malcolm Rose Jr., Shaah’s co-host on the upcoming Better Moves podcast dropping in June, who runs healthwealthandhiphop.com and has been figuring out how to share some serious wins on the financial fitness front. Crew love. 🦾💀

Then the episode opens up into Yani's world. She's in her final week at the studio before crossing into a whole new chapter, three days left, and she's been putting her body through it all week intentionally, stacking up every bit of the space and practice and teachers she's had access to before the threshold. Nine months of aerial. Coming up on a year with something that started as a hobby and quietly became a lifestyle. One-on-one with Jahari. Drill Sergeant Symone's spin pole class followed by a breakthrough flow moment in Jayla's Earthflow. A 40-minute self-session mid-week. Training with Faith the morning they recorded this.

Her instructor also quietly graduated her to intermediate, which she's still processing.

The conversation winds into what it means to have multiple forms of expression, writing, movement, photography, and how they don't all run at the same time. Right now the body is the instrument. That's the season. And that's enough.

Act III. In progress. In public.

gry8ful

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Chapters

0:00 - Cold open

0:27 - Late drop, no stress: finding the rhythm

2:45 - Shaah gets on the mic: first time in 20+ years

3:20 - Gift from Malcolm / Better Moves podcast

6:10 - Yani's final week: crossing the threshold

7:30 - Nine months of aerial, almost a year

8:05 - Monday: serendipitous one-on-one with Jahari

9:15 - Tuesday: Drill Sergeant Symone

10:25 - Jayla's Earthflow and a breakthrough moment

11:00 - Wednesday self-session and the week ahead

12:00 - Thursday plan: Faith, HFR work, Lotus class

13:20 - What is low flow? Yani explains

14:30 - The full schedule through Wednesday

14:50 - Getting graduated to intermediate

15:50 - Last day and the aerial anniversary

16:35 - Aerial as transmutation, writing in waves

17:55 - Wrapping up, excited for the next chapter

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Thoughts in Transit on:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5x4SwGtMZbjCF3axu1E2NyIQ9rVOs8K

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2TSLB0M1bkITSbBQc7JeYU

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thoughts-in-transit/id1895013301

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Malcolm Rose Jr.: healthwealthandhiphop.com

Better Moves (Podcast dropping June 2026): https://www.patreon.com/posts/grysklls-2nd-of-157381929

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Join the HFR Family home http://patreon.com/houseoffluidreflections

Shop HFR Art https://houseoffluidreflections.com/shop

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Socials
https://instagram.com/houseoffluidreflections
https://tiktok.com/@houseoffluidreflections

Yani (Yolanda Marie):

https://instagram.com/loveyolandamarie

Shaah (Dragon’s Pitchfork):
https://dragonspitchfork.com

https://instagram.com/dragonspitchfork

Shop GRYSKLL Collectible Tees, Mean Mugs, SKLL Caps, music & more: http://gryskll.com/shop

Join the GRYSKLL Crewmunity:

https://patreon.com/gryskll https://gryskll.bandcamp.com

This is the one that makes rooms go silent.

But first an acknowledgement:

We're late with this one. The past week explains why.

If you caught our bonus episode, Bodies of Creation: Initial Intentions, you know where things are. Yani put the vision on record, said out loud what Bodies of Creation actually is and what she wants it to become, and that same day she submitted her two weeks notice at her job.

More of that story is coming. The BoC page is already live at houseoffluidreflections.com/bodies-of-creation with work that has been quietly building. The conversation about what comes next is ongoing and we will be right here for it.

This week we are giving you something we recorded back in March and held onto. I was still figuring out what direction Thoughts in Transit was heading in. My goal was to just trust in myself, get started and figure everything out on the fly. It's part of how I wage my own war with The Trigger Word.

Every time I bring up the topic, engagement drops. Posts get ignored. Conversations stall. And yet it is one of the most directly relevant things we can look at as people trying to live and create honestly. So we talked about it anyway.

This is Yani's take, built from a past discovery through Buddhism, a long and sometimes frustrating journey of watching it in others before she could fully see it in herself, and a specific audition story that ended in 30 minutes of crying in the car. It is also where she draws the line between the notion of just getting rid of , and what she has actually landed on: evolution.

Grooming it. Maturing it. Learning to work with what it is instead of trying to eliminate it.

I gets into my own version too, specifically the back door kind, where it slips in through what looks like alignment.

My story in a future episode, maybe. This one is Yani's.

SIDEBAR: Thoughts in Transit's tagline changed last week. It was "Two people, one pup, a car, and everything the road shakes loose".

Now it's "Moving through the world, thinking out loud."

Links

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2TSLB0M1bkITSbBQc7JeYU

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thoughts-in-transit/id1895013301

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5x4SwGtMZbjCF3axu1E2NyIQ9rVOs8K

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/houseoffluidreflections

Bodies of Creation: houseoffluidreflections.com/bodies-of-creation

Bonus drop. A major milestone.

If you watched "Something's Changed" and / or saw any of the related IG or TikTok posts related to the “Becoming” showcase, you already saw some of what Bodies of Creation is. Those photos Yani shot for the showcase promotion are some of the work she is talking about in this episode.

We recorded this conversation in the car because it’s our current favorite spot to share thoughts and updates. Yani laid out her initial intentions for Bodies of Creation. What it is. What she wants it to be.Why it pulls at her the way it does. And what she actually wants to build from here.

Today she submits her two weeks notice at work so she can pour into her passion and focus on family businesses. Cooperative economics in action.

Bodies of Creation is about honoring and celebrating the bodies that create life, and those who feel, as Yani does, that their body is art itself. It starts with photography. It starts with the aerial and movement arts community she has fallen deeply in love with over the last eight months. And it starts with a truth she kept coming back to in this conversation: the work that fills her cup most is helping people see themselves in a way they do not always get to.

She talks about where the project came from, including Artists Touch, the series she and Shaah built years ago where they photographed and interviewed artists at no cost, traveling from NY to SC to FL to DC to make it happen. She talks about shooting the Flying Buddha “Spring Has Sprung Showcase” at On St. Elmo in Bethesda just for fun, and how much magic came out of it when there was no pressure. She talks about what she wants next: conversations with movement artists, behind the scenes with an instructor friend and herself as a student, Faith joining as co-host, and HFR’s Patreon as the home for all of it.

Some of the work is already at houseoffluidreflections.com/bodies-of-creation. If you are a movement artist and want to collaborate, reach out. Tips are welcome and genuinely appreciated. She is taking a leap and believing in herself, and some reciprocal energy goes a long way right now.

Come find out what Bodies of Creation is.

Love.

Bodies of Creation: houseoffluidreflections.com/bodies-of-creation 

Bodies of Creation on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collection/2171748 

Patreon: patreon.com/houseoffluidreflections

Thoughts in Transit on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5x4SwGtMZbjCF3axu1E2NyIQ9rVOs8K

Thoughts in Transit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2TSLB0M1bkITSbBQc7JeYU 

Thoughts in Transit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thoughts-in-transit/id1895013301

0:00 - Intro

0:22 - Falling back in love with photography

1:31 - The shoots that started it: Elise, Miranda

2:02 - How Artists Touch was born from this same impulse

3:06 - What Bodies of Creation actually is

3:45 - The plan: trusting the flow

4:19 - Shout out to Faith, the co-host

4:55 - Movement arts conversations, behind the scenes, instructor and student POV

5:21 - Eight months of aerial and why it is the most committed she has ever been

5:56 - Shaah: "this is your passion place"

6:31 - Approaching photography without the pressure

7:53 - What fills her cup: community and connection

8:33 - The moment people see themselves differently in her photos

9:21 - The self-love photo shoots thread

9:59 - Exploring, experimenting, wherever the wind blows

10:36 - The On St. Elmo showcase: proof of concept

11:03 - Open call: movement artists, come collaborate

11:14 - Tips are welcome, this costs something

11:44 - What Artists Touch really cost (NY, SC, FL, MD/DC)

12:41 - The vlog component: Patreon as the behind the scenes home

13:17 - The dream: stepping back from social, connecting with humans

We didn't film after the show. We stayed in the moment, took a drive through the city to let ourselves feel it, and came home.

This is the day after. Neither of us particularly wanted to be on camera.

Shaah had been thinking about something, how the best documentary moments are often the ones where the subject doesn't want to be there. How that discomfort is exactly where the story lives. So he turned the camera on, and Yani let him, because we had filmed all the way to this point and it felt wrong not to see it through.

What followed was a long, honest conversation about the community of people who showed up and held her, the backstage nerves and what it took to move through them, the specific weight of performing aerially in front of a live audience for the very first time, the relationships she is carrying out of this experience, and what begins to change when you stop believing the situation you were in was the only option.

This episode ends where it ends. Some of the rest stays between them. The do no harm ethos applies to your own story, too.

More in this series is coming.

gry8ful for The Family

🙏🏾

🔥🐉🔱🏡💀🌍🎹🐝🔑

We recorded this the day before Mother's Day. We start with a story about our chaotic trip to the creek. Phone went bloop, mic charging case chased the drink, and Zen who just wasn’t with ANY of it. The Force forced us to JUST rest.

Shinanagins aside, Shaah recapped a breakthrough moment with his mother last week. Yani discussed moving through her own arc unpacking several of her own circumstances that have led to pressurized expansion and personal accountability.

What came out of the conversation is something we both needed to say out loud: you can hold the beauty and the pain of a relationship at the same time. You don't have to pick one. And when the anger finally cools enough for sadness to speak, something different sets in.

This is a Mother's Day episode. It's also an episode about accountability, evolution, and what it looks like when two people who have done the work actually get to see it in themselves. 

Topics: Chaos in the woods, lost tech, Zen the Velcro puppy, mother relationships, no-contact periods, accountability vs. victimhood, anger vs. sadness, self-love, holding two truths simultaneously, the pressure cooker metaphor, Act III, and a Happy Mother's Day to every mother out there.

Where to find us: houseoffluidreflections.com | patreon.com/houseoffluidreflections | gryskll.com | dragonspitchfork.com

0:00 - Intro / The System Works (mic chaos edition)

0:49 - RIP to the social media phone

1:40 - The testament: where we are now

2:30 - That phone went bloop

3:28 - Chaos in the woods: Zen could not get comfortable

4:14 - The mic case goes into the creek

6:38 - We found a flat rock. The outing continued.

7:04 - Zen is at auntie's today

7:38 - Days off are days off (a lesson received)

9:27 - Why I turned the mics on

10:21 - Shaah: my mother and I, and the period of no contact

11:06 - Learning to be yourself in your parent's presence

11:46 - Shaah invites Yani into the conversation

12:10 - Yani: finding myself in a similar space

13:08 - Adjusting myself around her

14:07 - The traditional path I didn't take

15:35 - My father's death and the self-love reckoning

16:26 - Moving in together / you can't heal where you've hurt

17:15 - Taking space from my mother: the decision I thought would break me

17:57 - We will recover. Getting to know each other as adults.

18:11 - Arriving at accountability instead of victimhood

18:30 - Holding two truths simultaneously, with love

19:22 - Why it matters that neither of us lost our sh*t

19:37 - White rage, out of body, and the practices that anchor us

20:35 - The constellation connecting: both threads arriving at once

21:24 - The breakthrough just kind of unfolded

21:34 - The pressure cooker: it feels like the basmati is ready

22:17 - Head above water / fairy sparkle / trusting creative force

22:47 - Giving everything when it was all we had

23:37 - Accountability for the explosion, and the grace that preceded it

25:21 - My mother and my daughter: the relationships that came through the fire

26:19 - The bus called it / wrapping up

26:33 - Happy Mother's Day to every mother

In this episode we get in the car knowing exactly what we need to talk about. I had already sent Yani the links days before. There's a little sadness in her voice when I bring it up, and honestly, it makes sense. Three months of the most consistent writing she'd put in since 2023, and the platform she chose to build on turns out to be structured in a way that profits from content that is fundamentally misaligned with who we are and what we're building.

We get into what Substack's discovery tools surfaced and profited from with Andrew Tate in April 2026, why Yani pulled up Claude and read the response out loud in the car, and what the difference between hosting speech and actively platforming it means for where your subscription fee goes. We also talk about Shaah having already stepped away from TikTok and CapCut after the ownership change made the intentions of those platforms impossible to ignore, and how we're actively plotting our exit from Meta. We've been doing the work of cultivating healthier mindsets and curating better consumption habits for a while now. This episode is part of that same process. Choosing where to build, and what to put your energy and your dollars behind, is part of it too.

Social media has done a lot. It's how GRYSKLL came together. It's how a lot of the connections that matter to us got made. It's also contributed to some of the most damaging things happening in the world right now. We've been sitting with that tension for a long time. Shaah even coordinated a song about it, SMS (Social Media Sickness), a work in progress on GRYSKLL's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/social-media-sms-142965114

And then there's Sere. Right in the middle of working through all of this, Patreon drops a wave of new features and the network lights up. New energy, new activity, and Jack Conte himself dropped into a post we tagged him in. Jack built Patreon because the infrastructure that existed wasn't built for artists like him. That's exactly why GRYSKLL exists. That's exactly why HFR keeps showing up and building. Feeling that confirmation arrive right when we needed it, that's Sere doing what Sere does.

A detailed write-up with links and research is coming later this week on Patreon.

Thoughts in Transit is an unscripted in-the-car conversation series from House of Fluid Reflections. Two people, one pup, a car, and everything the road shakes loose. New episodes weekly.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/houseoffluidreflections

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thoughts-in-transit/id1895013301

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2TSLB0M1bkITSbBQc7JeYU?si=y2k1OvElTRGNx0Hl0I05bg

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5x4SwGtMZbjCF3axu1E2NyIQ9rVOs8K

This was originally episode 1 before we decided to leave Substack. It's even up on YouTube. More on that in next week's episode.

That one requires more than the conversation we had on the car. I've been doing some research to provide some extra value with it. While I finish preparing that here's the original Substack article text for this epsiode

We have conversations like this all the time. We just happened to capture this one while dropping Yani at work, as she was preparing for an afternoon discussing our work at an open house where the art been on display since January. So much has been going on that we honestly haven’t promoted it the way we should have.

On top of that, we’ve had to sit with the fact that neither of us is comfortable selling art. Yani has always taken the lead in that area, and I appreciate her immensely for it. This time she used Claude to help prepare for the event, and the way she used it sparked a whole other conversation.

Because here’s the thing. It works. It answered questions that humans in our circle couldn’t or wouldn’t. The DreamWorks cover art alone opened doors we didn’t know how to knock on. And that’s exactly the problem.

We’re artists. We know what’s at stake with AI, for creators, for communities, for the planet. We’ve even switched platforms over it. But where would some of this work be without it?

This conversation barely scratches the surface, but it landed somewhere honest. If people have a genuine beef with AI, maybe the question isn’t just about the tool. Maybe it’s the mirror.

🎥 Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube, Spotify or by joining the HFR Family on Patreon. Links at the bottom

Thoughts in Transit - Two people, one pup, a car, and everything the road shakes loose.

Episode 1

Thoughts in Transit is a raw, uncut conversation series from House of Fluid Reflections. No agenda. No script. Just us in the car with Zen, following whatever thread the ride decides to pull.

In Episode 01, the conversation starts with a press release and goes somewhere neither of us planned. The  @gryskll  Meets  @thabeggasofficial  press release dropped the day before we recorded this. Something shifted.

A documentary edit that wasn't ready. A night of footage that opened into a series. A morning that yielded more than the one before it. And a conversation about what happens when you stop externalizing and start trusting the force.

We talk about intuition and what it costs to follow it. “Sere”, the affirming nudge we've both learned to recognize. Overconsideration and externalization as the same trap wearing different names. Quantum theory, nonlinear time, and why the art tells you when it's done. Yani's aerial journey and how following a calling without knowing where it leads is still following a calling. And what it means to rewrite your reality while you're still living in the old draft.

The episode ends the way the best conversations do. Unexpectedly.

This is Act III. In progress. In public.

0:00 — Good Morning (Zen Makes His Entrance)

0:46 — The Press Release Dropped

1:26 — What the Press Release Stirred

2:39 — The Footage That Was Missing

3:15 — Naming FlashbaXe

3:47 — Sere: The Affirming Nudge

5:40 — Thank You for Being the Perfect Distraction

7:38 — The Art Tells You When It's Done

8:53 — The Wu Reference & the Paywall Idea

10:56 — Overconsideration vs Externalization

13:05 — Stop Explaining Yourself

14:47 — The Mirror Won't Blink First

18:42 — We Switched Timelines

23:13 — Introspection (The Word That Kept Evading Her)

25:27 — Where Is the Art Taking the Documentary?

28:07 — Go Back Through Your Journals

31:52 — Quantum Theory & Nonlinear Time

36:16 — Dancing With the Force

42:28 — We Keep Having the Same Evolutionary Arc

44:00 — The 48-Hour Manifestation Challenge

47:36 — I Can See You're Back Alive

50:20 — The Year of Automatic

53:22 — Aerial, Abundance & Following the Call

1:01:11 — Yes. We Are Moving.

1:01:43 — Rewriting Reality While You Live It

1:03:09 — [Yani closes the episode]

House of Fluid Reflections — houseoffluidreflections.com

Watch Episodes

Patreon — https://patreon.com/houseoffluidreflections

YouTube — https://youtube.com/@houseoffluidreflections

Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/2TSLB0M1bkITSbBQc7JeYU?si=y2k1OvElTRGNx0Hl0I05bg

Connect on Socials

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Connect with Yani (Yolanda Marie)

Yani — https://www.houseoffluidreflections.com/yolandamarie

Connect with Shaah (Dragon's Pitchfork)

Dragon's Pitchfork — dragonspitchfork.com

Killa Bee Movie — killabeemovie.com

gryMatter on Patreon — patreon.com/grymatter

Killa Bee Movie on Patreon — patreon.com/killabeemovie

#Documentary #RickRubin #manifestation