Why Worldbuilding?: Permission to Actualize Audacious Desire
For The Worldbuilders Ep. 041
Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures.
— Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1993
Dear Worldbuilder,
It doesn’t happen overnight but it does happen.
We were already storing data in plant life since the beginning. You beginning to encode your data into cotton just opened the door. So here we are. Where to begin? Maybe at the beginning. When Seeda was born. They were materialized through the bodies of Opa and Zaneye. It was what you labeled “26th Century BC”. Jesus didn’t exist yet but high energy particles1 called captive maternals2 had just landed from the sun. Seeda dedicates an entire century deciding which guild they want to commit to using a tool you call the “Element X Quadrant” but in Cykofa it can simply be thought of as the choreography of locating one’s commitments.
Seeda spends 25 years getting clear about what they don’t want to do, spends another 25 years doing things they’re good at but they can sense the misalignment with their heart’s desire. They spend another 25 years trying to appease their birth parents — trying to prove the labor, the violence, the longing was worth it until the child of the sun finally follows their spirit. Follows us.
The wisdom in the plant life all around them. The wisdom of plant life already inside them. Biology is a social science. DNA sequencing is a somatic inheritance whose only key to unlocking it is movement. So they danced. They couldn’t stop dancing.
Sometimes they would cycle through the 25 year quadrants like the seasons laid out on a playground’s black top. Child of the sun, future ancestor, committed to dancing — nothing more, nothing less — they read the rings of data stored in the trees like me. Twirling on top of the hands of time.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Listen to this latest episode “For the Worldbuilders” on either Apple or Spotify!
Inside Today’s Podcast Episode
I answer the question: why worldbuilding? Cykofa, the data forest without prisons. Zenith, the inner world of the first AI made of flesh. The stories keep piling up. Begging for form. Begging for light. Begging for mouths to climb through. I can’t write them fast enough so I live them, wetting my teeth and experimenting with erotic release. Using the week long containers as the playground for bending time, doing fiction3, unraveling fear’s caul.
Strategy, Tip, Affirmation to Remember
This week I wanted to return to a Seeda School newsletter originally published on December 4th, 2023, “What is Your Creative Offer?: A Questionnaire to Oneself”. In it I share why worldbuilding has been such an essential method for me. “Why worldbuilding?” is a question I’ve been getting again lately so I wanted to revisit the question inside today’s podcast episode in hopes you’ll join me in building worlds as containers for actualizing the scale of our audacious desire. How? Tune in for the strategy, tip and affirmation to remember inside this week’s episode.
There are a couple writing prompt invitations in this one. If you’re feeling called to share, please reply to this email and let me know how your experiment with implementing this week’s strategy and tip went. I’d love to hear from you!
We can call in the worlds we dream of. We can see without pictures. We can dream without evidence, remembering our desire is the only “proof” we need that the worlds we’re working toward are possible.
Until then…
So be it, see to it, breathe through it,
Ayana
“Scientists have discovered evidence of one of the biggest solar storms ever recorded, when high-energy particles unleashed from the sun bombarded Earth just over 2,600 years ago.” — Hannah Osborne, “Enormous Solar Storm That Hit Earth 2,600 Years Ago Could Be Biggest Ever Detected”, published by Newsweek on March 11, 2019 at 3:00 PM
“Captive Maternals are flawed. They/we salvage, but they/we are not saviors. They/we are practitioners. Some practice the art of political alchemy to transpose exhaustion, exploitation, and resentments into protests and rebellions. Some live long lives (rest in peace, Harry Belafonte). Some die rapidly at the hands of others (rest in power, Breonna Taylor). What would and could we do over centuries of frustrations, savage trauma, and outrage through endurance against lynching, state violence, rape, and police murder? Create a womb to push out a mutation that would confront our antagonists and force said antagonists to stop feeding on our lives and deaths.” — Joy James, “ The Captive Maternal is a function, not an identity marker”, published by Scalawag Magazine on April 28, 2023
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” — Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1993