The World We Need Already Exists
On crafting the memory of the truth
The Physics of Cotton
Our bodies string instruments
Strumming string theory
Fiber is the only material art form
That lets you write stories in mid air
and leave them there
Fiber as in cloth
Fiber as in thread
Fiber as in glue
Fiber as in the cotton
connecting me
to you.
— Ayana Zaire Cotton
It’s all already happened.
Just like the blue sky is always there behind the clouds, inside the Black Radical Time Continuum: you are already the writer, the novel has already been published, your last name is already Cotton and you will weave a world with words, your art is already finding exactly who needs it, and the new world already exists. A central aesthetic of the Black Radical Imagination is a refusal of time as linear. The gift is inside this refusal, inside this forest of grand marronage, inside this time continuum we get to live as if…
What would change if we accepted this gift? What decisions would we make if we accepted this invitation? How would we spend our time if we performed the world we need into being? The world that already exists inside the time continuum that is our collective refusal. How might we live as if…care was collective, craft was a technology facilitating interspecies kinship, and grief deepened belonging not fear.
As if our data lived in the trees and our song stained the river black.
As if the understory of our sew-ins were keys and maps.
As if gender was as fluid as the air we ride.
As if the weaving loom was a computer where spirit resides.
As if your great grandmother encoded data into the DNA of cotton plants.
As if the stack of cloth you spun and wove with that fiber became a grimoire of chants.
Inside this time continuum we get to live as if the memory is the truth1.
Sometimes technology is a more ancient word than we allow it to be. The most important technologists of our time are currently shaping red river mud into databases, in the kitchen braiding math into a cousin's hair, at the weaving loom drafting poems in midair, bending iron and watching water come out, blowing glass and observing their breath take shape.
The colonists once called America “the new world” and those same colonists are now looking to outer space to continue their tradition of domination. There is a theme of irony on full display. The weaving loom was the first computer, the origins of binary code enjoyed a peaceful life inside the grid of woven cloth for over 10,000 years2. Core memory weavers and Navajo women made the early NASA Mars space probes and then the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) possible3. More recently, the Webb Space Telescope which presented "the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date," according to NASA leveraged the centuries old tradition of origami4,5. Here’s the violent irony: ancestral craft practices have made some of the biggest advancements in the colonial tradition possible, yet a core tenant of the colonial tradition is to estrange and erase the memory of these ancient craft practices and technologies. Sometimes the foolishness is too profound for words.
So we go back to the studio and handbuild the earth into the shape of a fermentation crock, we carve spirit-time out of the dendrochronological database of wood, we model memory out of metal then hang it from our ear lobe. Some of the most important technologists of our time know, at our best, we are a species who practices transformation and ecosystem stewardship simultaneously. At our best we are public practitioners of material transformation. And this is the grand gift of craft, we get to collectively rehearse6 being right relationship with change7 through the transformation of clay into vessel, cotton into cloth, wood into shelter. Through craft we get to work out our anxieties around time and change by collectively practicing graceful transformation at the speed of tending to our ecosystems. Craft facilitates interspecies fellowship and ceremony, while asking “what if the definition of technology is transformation rooted in care?”8.
In these times, what gives me the most hope is ancient craft practices are much older than the craft tradition of colonization. So we’ll keep making drums out of hollow wood vessels and stretched flesh, baptizing our locs in black holes known as salon wash bowls, improvising with thread and needle to make quilted maps that lead us home, and weave memory with cotton full of data in open communication-collaboration with ancestors we’ve never met. Inside this time continuum they remind us we get to live as if our memory is the truth. As if the world we need already exists. Let’s meet under the stratosphere of the quilt frame where the shins of aunties are tree trunks and leftover stars burn bright when they pierce the sky with their needle. Sometimes the new world is observable from the living room floor, join us as we stargaze from it’s shore.
“The memory is the truth” is inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s quote, “The dream is the truth” from Their Eyes Were Watching God, pg. 32. Originally published September 18, 1937.
Programming Patterns: The Story of the Jacquard Loom published by the Science and Industry Museum on June 25, 2019
Core memory weavers and Navajo women made the Apollo missions possible, Published by Science News, Written by Joy Lisi Rankin, February 18, 2022 at 10:51am
Webb telescope's first photos reveal unseen aspects of the universe, By Ashley Strickland, CNN, Updated 11:35 AM ET, Sat July 16, 2022
Webb and Origami published by NASA
“Abolition is presence, which means abolition is life in rehearsal.” — Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute asks, “How we get in right relationship with change, and can we refine our strategies to align with the constantly changing conditions of our complex society?”
Oxford Languages currently defines “technology” as “The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry”. “Technology” defined as “transformation rooted in care” is inspired by kamra sadia hakim’s Care Manual: Dreaming Care into Being, inside this text is a frequent emphasis on the power of transformation.