Your Work = Our Breath

The Oxygen of Vision and Devotion

When I Get Home Director’s Cut (2019) by Solange. Screenshot of/during “Stay Flo” featuring Zolar Moon wearing the “Arm Cuff” Cykofian Artifact by me. See clip here. Image description: Zolar Moon wearing a sliver bikini, jewerly and lace up thigh high heels, carrying a life sized afrofuturist device down a long empty road.

Can I be honest?

I feel like we’re close enough for me to share this with you now. A couple weeks ago, a vision landed in my body during one of my ceremonial forest walks. Maybe it fell from the sky, came up through my feet or made its way to me while riding the breeze dancing through the understory.

It’s hard to say.

Anyway, in this vision I am a published author of several speculative fiction novels. And each novel is accompanied by a film, a visual album but for a book if you will, where I embody the protagonist. I give a performance in a hairstyle I’ve visioned, fashion I’ve designed, architecture I’ve collaborated with the earth to dream up and interiors I’ve crafted.

Instead of a book tour, there are a series of screenings and artist talks. This worldbuilding practice is so successful and impactful, it funds the opening of Seeda Sanctuary. The offline manifestation of Seeda School, Seeda Sanctuary is a world builder's playground for the black imagination, situated inside a forest garden speckled with cabins, a writing workshop, costume department for beauty and fashion, filming, photography and wellness studios. In the center of the sanctuary is an open, communal kitchen shaded by a tree older than us all, enjoying the view as we give thanks and share in the harvest of the garden.

Seeda Sanctuary is a place where folks come to write their books, bring their characters to life and document their worlds on camera. A place to bridge the black interior world with the outer world. 

A vision of petit marronage.

A vision of creative expression as spiritual practice.

A vision powered by our collective Element X¹.

A vision of possibility.

A vision that might overwhelm me until I remember
	I am the great granddaughter of both a woman named Honey 
	who practiced Hoodoo in the room next to her basement hair salon
	and a caregiver with a flower garden named Big Ma 
	who regularly had lengthy conversations with our dead.

A vision that might make me flatten with fear if I didn’t remember the work of the worldbuilders before me whose devotion carved out space for my breath.

An inhale made possible by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

An exhale made possible by Torkwase Dyson

An inhale made possible by Dionne Brand

An exhale made possible by Prentis Hemphill

An inhale made possible by Sonya Renee Taylor

An exhale made possible by Julie Dash

An inhale made possible by Alice Coltrane

An exhale made possible by Julie Dash

An inhale made possible by Toni Morrison

An exhale made possible by Kelela Mizanekristos

An inhale made possible by Aretha Franklin

An exhale made possible by Saidiya Hartman

An inhale made possible by Christina Sharpe

An exhale made possible by Akwaeke Emezi 

An inhale made possible by Octavia E. Butler

An exhale made possible by Audre Lorde

An inhale made possible by Simone Leigh

An exhale made possible by Solange Knowles 

And more and more and more as we breathe in and out. 

In and out.

Belly
Full 
O’
Helium 
Breath
Elemental desire
       Floating with devotion 
              Buoyant with belief

How dare we rob the world of the spacious breath our vision makes possible for those we’ll never meet?

What vision has been landing in your body lately? Heavy with want, light with possibility. A visual that made its long journey through the understory just to get to you. The story only you can tell, the song only you can write, the photograph waiting to be found by your eye, the dance your body is holding the choreography codes to, the offering the world is waiting for. 

What ceremonies do you need to invent or return to, to make the fear more bearable? 

What rituals turn the desire into devotion?

What practices help you remember the cosmic reward for contributing to our collective chorus of breathing is beyond our wildest imagination?

Like I said, by now, 

I feel like we’re close enough for me to come clean.

The muddy truth is, if you are a woman, queer, trans, disabled, black, indigenous, or otherwise fall outside of the tormenting shade of white supremacy, you will suffer unnecessarily. It’s not a question of if, it's a question of when and how. Morrison reminds us, we don’t always survive whole². This is why our attempt is a radical act and our desire is dangerous. Building a world centered around our Element X feels like risk and smells like revolution. 

This is why worldbuilders who look, live and love like us have saved our lives so many times. We know what they had to face to show up, to try, to begin again and again.

Their work, the deepest of inhales.

	I meditate for 10 minutes, walk in the forest for hours, 
	scribble poetry in the margins, dance in the mirror, 
	bathe to the length of my favorite sonic journeys and 
	flip through art books before bed like visual lullabies coating my dreams. 

Just to practice staying here.

Inside the truth of my visions and the divinity of my desire.

What rituals of re-membering maintain your faith in the breath you are creating? 

The world you are building. 

The work needs you well and so do we.

Put your oxygen mask on first,
	And when you’ve caught your breath
	Hand it to us, 
	Please.

1. N.K. Jemisin describes “Element X” as a creative device that powers speculative fiction. She frames it as a, ““What if...” question that establishes some foundational oddity”. Inside Seeda School we frame it as a “What if...” question that establishes clarity on your deep desire.

2. The author Toni Morrison answers a question from an audience member about "how to survive whole in a world where we are all victims of something." Toni Morrison was a part of The Connecticut Forum, in conversation with Frank McCourt and moderator Juan Williams, on May 4, 2001.