Remembering Yesterday, Practicing Today, Creating Tomorrow
Enrollment into the Treehouse is Now Open
Experimental artists, unruly creative women and non-binary folks, especially when we are Black and/or queer, don’t necessarily live long, sustainable lives. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes our don’t has to do with years of lacking access to healthcare. Sometimes our don’t has to do with the environmental racism of where we can afford to live. Sometimes our don’t is psychological. Sometimes our don’t is murder. This is the real reason why my name for God is “every day.” I’m grateful for each one you and I have.
— Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “The God of Every Day” published on December 22nd, 2021 by Topical Cream
Behind surrender and faith, practice is probably the most crucial component inside my “creative life of refusal”1. Trail markers in the wilderness, lighthouses amidst the oceanic expanse; my daily, weekly and seasonal practices are reliable points of return I can always swim toward. The chaos of our time is inviting us to release. Release the myths of safety, control and scarcity written by the colonial imaginary and get to work writing stories rooted in the truth of relation, care and abundance; so we may practice those new and ancient stories inside the god that is everyday.
The economy is collapsing today, electoral politics is collapsing today, universities are collapsing today, state sanctioned social safety nets are collapsing today, access to political study inside public schools and libraries is collapsing today and our ecosystems are collapsing today. We don’t wait to act when apocalypse is at our doorstep, we act because, today, apocalypse has already knocked down someone else's door. James Baldwin reminds us, “everyone you’re looking at is also you”. What practices do we commit to when we remember all the worst case scenarios are already happening?
For me this looks like:
Daily meditation and forest bathing to regulate and sooth my nervous system amidst the constant call to transform and adapt
Releasing Weekly Dispatches as field notes for how I survived since last week and reading your Weekly Dispatches on how you did the same with so much gratitude that we’re still here and get to try again
Collecting the Weekly Dispatches on surviving realities shaped by colonization and turning them into seasonal syllabi for facilitating realities shaped by black feminism
What’s a creative cadence of practice you can commit to amidst the collapse? The constant facts of collapse and creation are only overwhelming to me when I forget my daily retreats into my body and the forest, when I abandon my weekly “proof of life” dispatch and when I lose faith in the seasonal transformative power of my facilitation practice. Upon return, the overwhelming question drenched in despair: “how will we survive this?” softens into the stabilizing question drenched in desire: “how will we survive today?” This line of inquiry and action adds up to years of breadcrumbs, blueprints, maps, codes and keys for practicing new ways of being and alternative modes of relation that I’m sure serve as trail markers for generations forward and back. Lighthouses worth swimming toward today, because perhaps that is all we have.
Enrollment Inside The Treehouse is Now Open
“I think it is so important for us to try to extricate ourselves from the idea that the measure of value is one human life, and that if it is not achieved in our lifetimes, it is not important. If people who were enslaved held those ideas, they would not have struggled so much. They were struggling for us. They were struggling for the possibility of a new world. If we imagine the ways in which people 100 years from now, 200 years from now, will be thankful to us for doing the work that we are doing today, then that means that we will have played a part in the production of that future and that we will be spiritually present in that future. That, to me, means that our goal, our primary goals, are to create new arenas for struggle, to guarantee that it continues from one generation to the next.”
I want to invite you to remember yesterday, practice today and create tomorrow with us inside The Treehouse. Enrollment is now open. The Treehouse is a black feminist club for creative practice in reading, writing and breathwork. An arena for remembering ancient futures beyond white supremacy, colonization and capitalism so we may wrap words, images, sound, textiles around them each week. So we may dream up and practice irresistible revolutions2 today. So we may co-create and iterate toward the many tomorrows.
Visit the Treehouse website to learn more and enroll. While you’re there you can register for the free July Worldbuilding Workshop series to get a sneak peek inside the creative club and ask questions. The first free workshop is happening tomorrow at 12PM EST! See you inside?
“What if it is not an experiment, this creative life of refusal. This rarely institutionally-funded disloyal life of practice for a world as yet unnamable. This insistence on transformation when the bank account screams “conform.” What if this life as an independent experimental artist is not itself an independent experiment? What if it’s an interdependent ceremony?” — Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “The God of Every Day” published on December 22nd, 2021 by Topical Cream
“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