Surrendering to Who We Already Are
What will you build and with who?
“Note to selves: remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.”
Yesterday, we collectively pulled open a portal and allowed poetry to fly through. Yesterday, we built worlds on top of a web of belonging. Yesterday, I facilitated a worldbuilding and speculative design praxis workshop for the learners inside DWeb for Creators at Gray Area. The collective imagination that showed up in the workshop was inspiring (but not surprising) for so many reasons — the main one being: we were reminded we are already worldbuilders. Mirrors of desire, portraits of possibility, accepting the uncertainty of the future, longing for a present we can bear.
Lately I’ve been asking myself:
What would you write if you weren’t trying to protect yourself?
What would you say if you weren’t trying to protect yourself?
How would you show up if you weren’t trying to protect yourself?
Being in a practice of refusal also invites us to refuse to guard our heart. This is why “courage” is such a complicated word for me and I find myself picking up and playing with the word “surrender” instead. From birth, we all showed up here as vulnerable, we all showed up here as creative, we all showed up here as curious, we all showed up here as the embodiment of love. To return to our truest form isn’t an act of courage, it’s an act of surrendering to who we already are.
I keep returning to the technology of worldbuilding because it feels like the only platform large enough to rival the surround sound of fear: the stories of severance, the stories of scarcity, the stories of status quo, whose only goal is to make us forget.
Forget all the people and places that made us possible.
Forget the practice of showing up to protect each other.
Forget that we all showed up here vulnerable, creative, curious, an embodiment of love.
why some people be mad at me sometimes
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine.
— Lucille Clifton
Part of this “creative life of refusal”1 is refusing to forget. How do we hold this practice? How might we sustain inside this memory of belonging? By dreaming beyond the scale of scarcity, severance and status quo storytelling. We give ourselves permission to change the weather, to bend time, to re-engineer the sound. When the surround sound is pumping out stories of severance, we give ourselves permission to be audacious enough to create playlists of our own. Why? In order to imagine and craft the worlds we cannot live without, we have to drown out the worlds we cannot live within. Our protests become louder than the police sirens, our community meetings become more attractive than our self-isolation, our performance art becomes more irresistible than our pretending.
Are you a worldbuilder?
Odds are, the answer is yes. This is how we showed up. We just need to create our own stories that act as windows, doors, bridges, portals, wayfinders that invite others into the practice with us. We turn up the volume and all of a sudden we’re vibrating with possibility, folks generate ideas you would’ve never thought of and we’re rehearsing liberation now. This is the audacity of vulnerability, this is the audacity of return, this is the audacity of a creative offer, this is the audible audacity of worldbuilding. The question isn’t are you a worldbuilder? The question is, what will you build and with who?
Enrollment Closes Today
Join us for a season of building and blooming inside the Seed A World retreat where we will:
Remember your desire
Map your creative ecosystem
Craft your story
Develop your framework
Release your creative offer
Enroll and receive lifetime access to:
Almost 20 hours of worldbuilding content broken down in 9 course modules released weekly.
The Worldbuilder’s Handbook with over 50 pages of tools, templates, frameworks and guides for developing an income generating creative offer in alignment with your desire and values.
Weekly live open studio sessions where TOGETHER we will workshop your offer using the tools in The Worldbuilder’s Handbook, in real time, providing feedback, affirmations and accountability along the way.
A Discord community of interdisciplinary worldbuilders.
The Seeda School Treehouse, our alumni network for post-retreat support and skillsharing.
And so, so, so much more…
We retreat tomorrow, see you there?
What Seeda School Learners Are Saying About the Retreat...
"After grinding for over a decade in the nonprofit sector, I needed support building a viable, self-directed career path to generate income rooted in my values and creativity. The Seed A World Retreat offered both the practical tools and community encouragement I was seeking to heed the creative call I have been feeling. Now I look forward to sharing this work that feels personally terrifying and necessary, and I believe in my ability to do it using the Seeda School tools. During the retreat, Ayana held space with such admirable curiosity and generosity! If you want an experienced, informed, Black feminist, imaginative hype-person to put a loving battery in your back, sign up for the Seed A World Retreat immediately.”
— Jasmyne Gilbert, Winter 2024
"The Seeda School is unlike anything I have experienced before. It's a mix of personal, intimate, and necessary inner groundwork, visioning for the future, and practical tools for business and financial sustainability, all within a liberatory framework of black feminism and worldbuilding. I found it to be such a necessary container for reflecting, visioning, developing ideas, dreaming up possibilities and then bringing them to life with the many tools that are offered throughout the course. Ayana is a brilliant and generous facilitator, and has thoughtfully curated a safe community of support among like-minded artists and creatives. I am telling everyone I know about Seeda School as I feel like all interdisciplinary artists and creatives need this kind of facilitated retreat experience to bring their ideas to life and offer them to the world."
— Steph Rue, Winter 2024
"Seeda School is the most nourishing, electric, brilliant, inspired, held space I have been lucky enough to be a part of. I entered the retreat from the depths of a creative winter, and Ayana built the container for a true and revelatory spring. She has architected the balance of structure, rigorous tools, juicy inspiration, accountability, and relational support that will help you (finally) recognize and birth the thing that has been calling you. And more than that, Seeda is the invitation to manifest the luscious version of a life you didn’t know you were allowed to have."
— Olivia Vagelos, Winter 2024
"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 by Topical Cream on December 22nd, 2021