Design Your Creative Ecosystem: The 3 Nodes of Practice and Your Erotic Center
For the Worldbuilders Ep. 61
"The Afromantic will unfurl a cultural history, critical theory, aesthetic expression, and existential assertion of B/black love outside. At the center of this project is Afromance: a way of life driven by utopic dreaming, ecstatic feeling, starry-eyed seeing, deep tenderness, a passion for liberation, and a will to love—all while it tends to the great grief and strife that beset blackness. Afromance might also name our ethical commitments, artforms, critical theories, political tactics, and revolutionary struggles that love blackness. The book will follow black love to cookouts, festivals, carnivals, rooftops, rallies, jazz funerals, gardens, distant stars, and forest clearings—yielding an account of love that is also an act of love…The love I describe is not some flighty, flimsy fancy. This is world-making, world-shattering stuff.”
— La Marr Jurelle Bruce, @the.afromantic, Instagram Post (October 6th, 2024)
Dear Worldbuilder,
Our creative practices can sometimes feel like an infinite puzzle yielding infinite questions. Which ideas do I prioritize producing? How do I slice time to get the “most important” tasks completed first? Should I protect my creative practice from monetization entirely? The minutiae, the to-do list, the hierarchy of priorities, the logistics of it all can sometimes pull us away from our larger, original intention. We can get so distracted by the how that we forget the why.
As wild avatars worldbuilding on the internet it can be far too easy to prioritize production over a depth of connection. What if the question isn’t “where and when can I find the time?” but, “can the shape of my practice follow black love to cookouts, festivals, carnivals, rooftops, rallies, jazz funerals, gardens, distant stars, and forest clearings?”
How might we weave our creative practice into our practice of being, living, loving without hierarchy and productivity hacks but with a radical, quotidian presence? Staying with the rhythm of our inhale and exhale and the drumbeat of our hearts.
Y’all this “world-making, world-shattering stuff” called “the practice of love” is the entire point. It is the only reason we’re here. It is the erotic center. It is the overlapping “why” fueling our entire creative ecosystem — whatever form it might take. Perhaps the shape of what we produce informs our theory, but love is the immaterial erotic center that informs the why of the practice; our reason for return that can never be extinguished. What worlds will you shatter with your love? What worlds will you make with your love?
Inside This Mini-Workshop We…
3️⃣ Design our Creative Ecosystem through 3 nodes of creative practice: Art, Curiosity, Entrepreneurship
🔎 Reflect on how our Curiosity Node might serve as a marketing channel for our Entrepreneurship Node
💸 Return to Sojourner Truth’s spell, “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance” to explore how our nodes of creative practice might inform and support eachother
🤝🏾 Explore how predictability in our Business Node might fuel a depth of creative permission inside our Art Node
♊️ Remember to infuse play and joy in whatever we do by imagining our Creative Ecosystem through the framework of our Big 3 Astrological Signs
🔮 Abolish the subsconscious hierarchy in our bodies and creative practices in order to rehearse ways of being, working and relating beyond colonial imaginaries
🌳 Enrollment Into the Treehouse Is Now Open
I want to invite you to join us in the Treehouse where we cultivate, nurture and practice the love animating our creative ecosystems. Enrollment is now open and closes on October the 21st. We kick off the fall Seed A World Retreat inside The Treehouse on the 21st as well, but there’s already marketing workshops, spells and strategies waiting for you in the meantime.
If you want to learn more or still have questions, register for our free upcoming 2-Part Worldbuilding Workshop Series. The first one is tomorrow, October 8th and it’s all about seeding a world rooted in the truth of your desire, your love. And the second workshop is on October 17th where we talk about how we might financially resource the worlds we’re building. Registration is free and gets you access to both.
Share this flyer with a friend or study buddy you’d love to workshop and retreat with inside the Treehouse! 👇🏾
Divine timing. Thank you for this. Salaams. Peace