Our Right to Release
On money making space hydrated with possibility
Join us for the last Worldbuilding Workshop of the year on Tuesday, October 10th at 3pm EST where we will locate your deep desire using the “Element X” quadrant and I will teach my framework for seeding and deepening an interdisciplinary practice rooted in the erotics of your creative vision.
It’s Monday morning at my favorite coffee shop and I’m mesmerized by the freedom I’m witnessing. A toddler is freestyle dancing to electronic instrumentals in the middle of the busiest section of the establishment. The line wraps around her, the towering members of her species are careful not to interrupt her flow, everyone collectively ensures she has enough space to be. To dance. Enthralled by this scene, time slows and I take a sip of my black coffee with two pumps of vanilla syrup. The usual. And I try to hold back tears of joy. As usual. I realize we’re collectively making space for her to dance and that’s probably opening up space inside us too.
I’m once again washed away, stolen from another shore by the waves of another daydream. Floating in a channel of time that is neither here nor there I find myself inside the vision of Cykofa — on the black river, where cornrows are cryptography keys, data farms are data forests, the weaving loom is a computer, a coded cotton cloth is a document, and chain link fencing from demolished prisons are used as architectural membrane woven with plant life. Y’all know where we are by now. The only place where I’d let myself turn any open space into a dance floor. This post-prison past-future is the only space I’d feel safe enough to dance with abandon, to lose my mind to my body, beyond the security of solitude...beyond the threat of arrest.
When the white dove lands on the black water, there’s trouble in the lowlands at night. It’s time for the ceremony that sets their grief free. Movement is the only way to untie the sorrow, Cykofians realized that a millennia ago. “I know where you are but can’t remember when you are”, Seeda recalls, “Are you before us or after us?”. The question pulls Seeda back into the current moment. They’re burying an elder. Someone is singing at the edge of the water, the poem tightens and moistens at the same time. They reach down in the throat to free the knot from the body. A release so immediate and complete they’ve been using it as their primary communication technology for centuries. Dance. A greeting of the hands initiates the conversation then they circle around and around. Shouting inside the ring. Sometimes holding eye contact, sometimes letting it float like that fluffy particle of hope you saw land on lavender yesterday. Sometimes speaking in tongues, most times humming. See this is the only way to live. They realized this a millennia ago. On a planet vibrating with life, it’s impossible to sit still.
Some where. There. Here. I want to go some there where movement is the primary form of communication, where all of earth’s surface is a dance floor and we make space for each other’s right to release. Cykofa started as a longing which I transmuted into a novella. The novella felt like it wanted to be a novel, then felt like it wanted to be a screenplay but I now know the writing is simply coding. A coding of time, an act of creating the future, writing the world you need into being. Isn’t that all history is anyway? A storytelling technology that informs the future. Where am I going with all of this? Well, what I need to experience, more than Cykofa the novel, more than Cykofa the film, is the physical expression of its possibility. How might we practice abolitionist futures on the way towards some there, where, here?
Seeda Sanctuary is a forest garden amongst the trees glittering with reflective sculptures and dewy produce for our mouths. A place of petit maroonage where wellness studios are hush harbors and cozy cabins for artist residents are designed by black feminist architects with handmade quilts from elders covering the beds, covering us. Do you have visions like this? Visions heavy with ecstasy, vibrating at the scope and scale of spirit? Visions boundless with desire and budget? Since the beginning of my art practice I have thought about generating income. I have parents with no traditional art background. A southern black mother who was raised in rural Virginia and a black father who was raised in the Steel City, and if their daughter was going to be an artist she better be sure to not be a starving one. So I thought about money, early and often. A mandate that at first felt oppressive and paradoxical, I am now grateful for.
Anyone who tells you money isn’t a necessary creative resource is being disingenuous. I want to live in a world where artists have money and a lot of it. A world where artists are able to produce the work that changes our lives because they’ve put their oxygen mask on first and their financial needs are met. A world where artists can afford healthcare until it’s universal and save up for retirement until capitalism is dismantled. A world where artists can afford housing that nurtures their creative spirit and can put money on a kin’s utility bill too. A world where artists can secure the acres for herbalism practice through community land trusts, build the science and technology music recording studios on their blocks and establish a ceramic cooperative owned by indigenous aunties. A world where Seeda Sanctuary exists. When explaining Seeda School for the 317th time to a friend this past weekend, I caught myself quoting Toni Cade Bambara1. I told her Seeda School is a retreat for interdisciplinary artists making revolution irresistible through worldbuilding.
The song changes, the black water flavored with sweet vanilla is almost gone and the little girl is winding down her dance routine. I’m returned to the shore of the present moment and thank the ancestors. I’m filled with satisfying gratitude for the gift of their memory. The memory of why we show up to the work. To make space, to make space, to make space for each other’s right to release.
I hope you’ll join me on the dance floor of Seeda School’s last worldbuilding workshop of the year where we’ll use the Element X quadrant to locate your deep desire, the seed of that big juicy vision, wet with want, hydrating our hope. Inside this workshop we’ll also break down Seeda School’s 9-week worldbuilding framework for developing an income generating creative offer. Enrollment ends on October 16th and this upcoming retreat session will be the last live session of the year so I hope you’ll register for this free workshop to learn more. Please share the flyer below with a friend you’d love to retreat with or with anyone you think might be interested in starting the new year with an income generating creative practice!
“As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.” ― Toni Cade Bambara, Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara
"Make revolution irresistible" YES these are the words I've been looking for
This fed me in so many ways. I’m excited to join you for the workshop. See you there💫