Working with Element X Energy
Embodying a Destabilizing Love
i don't want to die yearning across a wasteland for some familiar touch. i don't want to die excavated of my dreams, or devastated by the magnitude of what has been destroyed around me. i want to die unhurried. i want to die warm and war-less. i want to die empty of all the i love yous i could have ever said. i want to die with the windows open, a passing breeze to caress my skin. i want to die with my palms upturned, or resting against those of someone(s) kind enough to witness me in my leaving.
for this to come to pass, i must work for it with every unpromised breath i’m given because empire wants us all to die without dignity. it will take immense grit and vulnerability to defy the fearsome conditions that we are up against, to force the Death-dealers to ouroborize themselves instead of our bodies and the planet.
— Dkéama Alexis, “take heart”1 published on Returning to the Source (R2TS)
N.K. Jemisin describes “Element X” as a creative device that powers speculative fiction. She frames it as a, “what if...” question that establishes clarity on some magic, mysticism, fantasy, advanced technology or “foundational oddity” inside a story.
Inside Powerpuff Girls it’s “what if…Chemical X”
Inside X-Men it’s “what if…Mutation”
Inside Naruto it’s “what if…Chakra”
Inside Black Panther it’s “what if…Vibranium”
Inside Cykofa it’s “what if…Abolition”
Inside Seeda School we frame it as a “what if...” question that establishes clarity on your deep desire and powers the story of your creative practice. N.K. Jemisin says “this premise binds the narrative together, defining what is possible in a story and shaping what can (and does) happen.”2 I say, “your Element X binds the narrative of your LIFE together, defining what is possible in your story and shaping what can (and does) happen.”
The “and does”, “and did”3 part of this spell is what makes X so elemental. Babe, what if I told you, you can literally decide how this shit ends? In your power, or running away from yourself which is to say running away from us. And only us and god knows how tired we are of running, our gods know.
Our ancestors knew stepping into our power was ultimately, always, the only option. But it just took us longer to get here than we thought. We thought it was only going to take one lifetime and it ended up taking several. And I don’t know why, and I still don’t know why we had to die that many times to get here. Right here, where we finally choose ourselves.
Never mind the time it took,
we can walk on water here
we can ride the air here
we can kiss the fire here, we kiss the fire ever so gently
we can make love with the earth here.
This is Element X energy engaging our entire sensorium, everywhere, all at once. Everywhere, all at once we are here and I am painting with words because I decided what can (and does) happen in a story that can only be mine to write. So I better get to writing it. I better get to writing about how all I ever dream of doing is staying right here. Inside these brushstrokes, these colors, these loose gestures, these curves, it’s wet in these words.
How do you know when you’re working with Element X energy? When you are engaged in creative play that reminds you of the elements: earth, wind, fire, agua. Where remembrance of your power courses through and it’s beauty compels you into irresistible4 obedience. Utter surrender to desire takes you into its mouth, so you enter, and you like it here.
Find creative play that feels like the erotic musk of petrichor. A landscape where double-dutching through time is how you walk. A stroll is how you breathe. A nap is how you ease. A bath is how you please and everything is all good. I promise you, everything is all good here. Let’s go, go, go find your Element X, we leave at Dawn. Toward living inside a story you designed, this time with nothing but love. Imagine that. The space for love expanded and the fear got smaller. Look at that. Our doubts got smaller and our dreams taller. Can you see it? We big, baby, big.
Our power is our ability to self-author. What is the “what if…” question in your story? That question that establishes clarity on the magic, mysticism, fantasy, advanced technology and foundational oddity that is you.
What if I’m a poet What if I’m a painter What if I’m a piano player What if I’m a teacher What if I’m a guide What if I’m the moon and the sky What if I’m a prayer What if I’m a carer What if I’m a soothsayer
It’s not that long of a way from here to there. Giving yourself permission to ask your “what if…” question is the fuel that propels you forward. The erotic as power5. Start the sentence with “what if…” and leak out the most erotic job title you can imagine, then set forth to doing that thing and that thing only.
We get free by running past eros, toward a love before colonization. That’s what gets us free, running past a palatable love to something much more wild, undetermined, ungovernable and accountable. A whatever we were before the word “human” was invented. A singularity, a point in space where some property is infinite. I’m talking about a cosmic commute between the parable of our past and an ancient future where we are no longer living inside someone else's story. Defining our Element X is what gets us there.
“What if I can…”
“What if I am…”
“What if I will…”
Let’s call these “anchors of agency”, tools we drop into the ocean of our grief, our sadness, our longing, our depth, to find our ground. A question doesn’t ask us to do anything, it just asks us to think about it. And thinking about your desire is the very first step in every journey back to self. Coming into increasing and increasing remembrance and awareness of agency is essential, one could even say elemental. No physical effort is required just yet, for right now, just think “what if..it happens exactly as I imagined it?” What do you imagine when you allow yourself to imagine it? At the core of your pleasure inside the glow of presence, available to you at any time, it’s there. Go ahead, imagine it.
And by “any time” I mean, now.
What if we collaborate with air, water, fire and earth to create another world? What if we did it together? What if we start now? What if we take up Toni Morrison’s invitation and flood, and flood, and flood6. Make it wet, make it glisten. Again, what if we did it now? Returned to the site of our memory to build a new.
Inside this creative commute we apply Element X energy to the story of our past. Through practicing with a sankofa7 sensibility, we are reminded how we write the past is how we will write the future. How are you writing the story of your childhood? How is that story reflected in your current behavior? Is this behavior in alignment with your desire, yes or no? If no, release it; you don’t need it where we’re going. The journey back to our Desire is one that ultimately aims to root us back into a politic of love instead of a politic of fear.
“What if I embodied a politic of love?” Is how my story began and how it will end.
This is the “what if…” question that informs every double-dutch through time I take. Become the foundational oddity inside any and every system of domination. You don’t want to fit in inside oppression, you want to destabilize the bitch. You want to become an embodiment of opposition and threat to every system that makes it hard for you to breathe. You want to descend down into the caves of every layer of time, mountain, law, tunnel, decree and become fire, a point of singularity, an explosion ready to burst and burn it all down at a moment’s notice.
As the story goes, we lived into the what if and went boom.
🌱 Seeda School News
🎙️ The podcast For the Worldbuilders returned last week with episode 63: “Calling Our Power Back to Us: All Stories Rooted in Independence Are Lies”. Tune in and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube if you haven’t already. If we’re going to tell stories, let’s tell the ones rooted in the truth of relation, yeah?
🌳 Treehouse members are invited to join us tomorrow, Tuesday, December 3rd at 12PM EST for this month’s black feminist marketing workshop all about how we name and declare our values in our creative practice to attract co-conspirators, collaborators and opportunities in alignment with our desires and the worlds we’re building in our life and anti-capitalist businesses.
Together, we'll uncover spells, seeds and strategies for using our system of values as a framework for an email mini course, batch of creative dispatches or series of sales emails during launches.
I can’t recommend subscribing to Dkéama Alexis’s newsletter, Returning to the Source (R2TS), and reading their latest love letter “take heart” enough. This letter features critical reflections on death, home and how we survive the violence of these geopolitical times while honoring our breath and eachother. It also cites
’s newsletter and Dr. Brendane’s much needed words and principled critiques many black feminists were hungry for amid liberalism infiltrating and co-opting our culture and creative imagination during the most recent (and every) election season. I’ve had the most humbling experience worldbuilding alongside both Dkéama and Dr. Brendane inside Seeda School and I’m always transformed by their continued black feminist praxis. Get into their wake work, okay?N.K. Jemisin, Teaches Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing Workbook published by MasterClass
“The grammar of black feminist futurity is a performance of a future that hasn’t happened yet but must. It is an attachment to a belief in what should be true, which impels us to realize that aspiration. It’s the power to imagine beyond current fact and to envision that which is not, but must be. It’s a politics of prefiguration that involves living the future now.” — Tina Campt, “Quiet Soundings: The Grammar of Black Futurity”, Listening to Images (2017), p. 17
“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
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.” — Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power (1978)
“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory—what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding.” — Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory” published in Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir by William Zinsser (Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), pages 83-102.
Sankofa (pronounced SAHN-koh-fah) is a word in the Twi language of Ghana meaning “to retrieve” (literally “go back and get”; san - to return; ko - to go; fa - to fetch, to seek and take) and also refers to the Bono Adinkra symbol represented either with a stylized heart shape or by a bird with its head turned backwards while its feet face forward carrying a precious egg in its mouth. Sankofa is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which translates as: “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” (Source: Wikipedia)