Choose the Role You Can Sustain Not the Role You Think We Need
For The Worldbuilders Ep. 038
Maroonage is my inheritance. The right to opacity1 is passed down from generation to generation. And I know, if I love you I can not hide from you. We just wrapped up Week 3 inside the Winter 2024 Seed A World Retreat and visibility, being seen, being perceived and “coming out of hiding” has been consistently coming up each week. I’ve been feeling called to invite us to consider where we’re being purposeful and intentional in our creative solitude vs. where we’re practicing unhelpful self-isolation that has us hiding from each other in a commitment to a false sense of safety. I’ve been there, mistaking the solitude for safety when safety is only possible inside relation as Mariame Kaba reminds us2. The same person who reminds us, “Everything worthwhile is done with other people”3. How might we embrace both our right to opacity and the poetics of relation? Remembering they’re two sides of the same coin.
In this episode we reflect on what happens when we stop asking, “what should I do?” in the wake of every mass colonial violence and instead ask “what’s a practice of relation that I could sustain for a lifetime?”
Strategy
In 2016 I decided to take coding seriously. Two things were happening, we were witnessing the Facebook election controversy unfold and I was busy trying to build an alternative to Instagram for artists to share their work online. These overlapping events opened a portal of curiosity inside my practice; I started reflecting on how much we needed “Community Software Engineers”. I couldn’t stop thinking about the status quo shifting possibilities of cohorts of software engineers who dreamed of more than working at Google. That vision and desire took me down the path of teaching software engineering which brought me to the altar of a writing practice. While we still need “Community Software Engineers” I eventually had to call it. I couldn’t sustain a lifetime of teaching coding but I realized could sustain a lifetime of writing. The more I practice the more I remember they’re the same thing.
The strategy is in the title: Choose the role you can sustain, not the role you think we need. Why? It turns out whatever you can sustain for a lifetime is exactly what we need too.
Tip
Check out Slow Factory’s Callings & Roles for Collective Liberation framework for a list of possibilities in alignment with your need and our desire. Read the roles and tune into your body. Listen for piqued curiosity or embodied resonance. Maybe your role is a blend of three, creating an entirely new sound.
Remember
In this episode, what we’re talking about is a lifetime of practice. A lifetime of dedication to liberation struggles and interlocking our art with community organizing objectives. Choose the role YOU NEED to commit to more than WE NEED you to commit to it then promise to join us.
Instead of asking “what should I do?”, these are three questions I’m asking instead:
Which roles can I sustain for a lifetime?
What containers will I practice inside of? For me this is the 3 hours between 5am-8am, candle-lit evenings in the bathtub and my creative offer, the Seed A World Retreat.
Lastly, who will I practice these roles with? I hope the answer is you.
Listen to this latest episode “For the Worldbuilders” on either Apple or Spotify and let me know what you think by commenting below or replying to this email.
With desire,
Ayana
"We clamor for the right to opacity for everyone.” — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation (1990) “For Opacity”, pg. 189-194
“Mariame Kaba: Everything Worthwhile Is Done With Other People” by Eve L. Ewing published by Adi Magazine (Fall 2019)
Phewww this hits my core. A role that can be sustained!!!
Idk why this is so good, but it's good.