Join host Ayana Zaire Cotton where they reflect on worldbuilding and interdisciplinary practice with occasional guests. "For The Worldbuilders" is presented by Seeda School which hosts a 9-week retreat helping you seed, deepen or return to an interdisciplinary practice, release a creative offer and develop a cohesive narrative through the framework of worldbuilding.
You know that meme that's going around saying “propaganda i'm not falling for”? Well the propaganda we're not falling for is the discourse that says we need to quit our day jobs in order to be “real artists”, “real diviners”, “real entrepreneurs”. Or whatever, because truth is…we can be working full-time inside our passion and still be in misalignment with the sometimes uncomfortable and terrifying invitations of our creative spirit. My intention behind recording this podcast episode is to invite us to explore how we might bring our full witchy-ness into our work. Less about the "what" of what we do and more about the "how". How do we show up in the fullness of our power, how do we maintain boundaries that support our bodies and how do we refuse to sever ourselves from our spirit for work misaligned with our values? We'll explore all this and more in today's episode.ResourcesLet's Work Together 1:1 On Your Creative Offer: https://www.seedaschool.com/coachingSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsCover Art: Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust (Film Still), 1991
My intention behind recording this podcast episode is to ask: are we in a season of seeding or reaping? Are we clinging to the energy of survival mode when spirit is inviting us to breathe and take in the garden we've built — enjoying the fruits of our labor and perhaps using them to create the next dish, recipe or project with ease. Perhaps we cling to the energy of survival mode and invent fires to put out because we're clinging to a feeling of control and certainty. But what if change and transformation don't have to be disorienting and destabilizing, what if we can relax into the process instead? What if the practice is about using what we have on hand to create an offering and trusting that, that is more than enough, trusting that that is plenty? These are the questions we're going to explore in today's episode.ResourcesLearn More and Enroll into the Seed A World Retreat: https://www.seedaschool.com/programSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsA Process for Finding Purpose: Do THIS to Build the Life You Want with Jay Shetty on the Mel Robbins PodcastThe Combahee River Collective StatementArthur Jafa: Sequencing the Notes | Art21 "Extended Play"This Japanese Shrine Has Been Torn Down And Rebuilt Every 20 Years for the Past Millennium by Rachel NuwerCover Photo: Elizabeth Catlett, El Abrazo, 1978, Mackey Twins Art Gallery, © Elizabeth Catlett Family Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023, photo: Frank Sperling
My intention behind recording this episode is to humbly invite us to consider what got us to our current reality might not get us to our wildest dreams. Maybe it was ambition, external validation or the perceived safety of playing small inside our own dreams that got us here but these postures of practice are too hollow to strike this moment and inspire long-lasting change. What if we dreamed from inside the sturdy validation of love instead? A regenerative force of motivation we can sustain over a lifetime, expanding into actualized dreams too wild for words. Upon further inspection, through the looking glass of interdependence, we see it is love that got us here and it's love that will get us there, to worlds as yet unnamable.ResourcesEnroll in the Seed A World Retreat or Register for the Worldbuilding Workshop to Learn More: https://www.seedaschool.com/programSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsThe Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audre LordeKaren M. Rose's (IG: @empresskarenmrose) Libra Full Moon PostAlexis Pauline Gumbs on The Black Studies PodcastCover Photo: “Anna Julia Cooper: Educator, Writer and Intellectual” (Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture)
I am recording this episode for the push through artists who have worked so hard, for so long that they don't even know what their max capacity is — every year presents new challenges, requiring new limits, seemingly stretching into infinity. I am recording this episode for those who delight in the rigor of a challenge and experience an erotic charge when spirit is inviting them into the next growth spurt or learning curve. I am recording this episode for those of us who are getting on our Zoom while grieving, because we desperately want to hit pause but the bills keep coming. I see you. I've been each of these worldbuilders, sometimes all at once. How do we know when a season is requiring our strength or our stillness? This is the question I hope to unpack in today's episode.ResourcesRegister for the Free 2-Part Worldbuilding Workshop Series and Download the Spring 2025 Syllabus: https://www.seedaschool.com/programSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsDivining Poets: Clifton — A Quotable Deck from Turtle Point PressRest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia HerseyCare Manual: Dreaming Care into Being by kamra sadia hakimWhat It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World by Prentis HemphillThe Last of Us on HBOCover Art: Somaya Critchlow, Untitled (Rope and Moon), 2018, Materials: Oil on Canvas, Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 in (21 x 14.8 cm)
You don't need more affirmations. But perhaps, like many of us, you are desiring tools, skills and strategies for navigating the seasons where your faith starts to feel foolish and the results you wished for are taking longer than the ego can bear. In this episode we explore navigating suspicion around our creative commitments and the temptation to give up inside the messy middle. We remember the potency of our creative power activates when we're lost, not when we know the way. How do we remain steadfast inside our commitments while facing the grief, fear and uncertainty of our time? How do we trade the misleading allure of instant gratification with the sturdy sense of alignment that arises when we choose the practice of closing the gap between our values and our actions everyday, as Mariame Kaba invites us to do? How do we release all our “shoulds” and stay in the game long enough to learn what comes next? These are the questions we explore inside today's episode.ResourcesRegister for the Free 2-Part Worldbuilding Workshop Series and Download the Spring 2025 Syllabus: https://www.seedaschool.com/programSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitations“for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” is a 1976 work by Ntozake Shange. It consists of a series of poetic monologues to be accompanied by dance movements and music, a form which Shange coined the word choreopoem to describe. It tells the stories of seven women who have suffered oppression in a racist and sexist society.“What Does It Take to Sustain the Lives of Black Feminists While We Are Alive?: Defining Affirmation Banking & Overcoming the Expected Humility of Accepting It” by Kay Brown of Assemblage: Baby's BreathFaculty Spotlight: Graphic Designer and Musician Wesley Taylor, Emphasizes Design Justice, Community Building“It Is Working—You Just Can't See It Yet” (Substack) and “225: Stop Quitting Too Soon” (Podcast) by Myleik TeeleVictoria Monét on taking the streets instead of the highway and one of my favorite songs of hers, Hollywood feat. Earth, Wind and FireCover Art: Betelhem Makonnen, "conjugated keyboard" (2020) Materials: Keyboard, tumbled rocks, Dimensions: 12.6" x 14.8" x 1 “
Our favorite black feminist was most likely an entrepreneur because for many of our ancestors black feminist entrepreneurship was simply a synonym for “the practice of surviving with our dignity in tact”. Many of us have heard the stories if we listened closely, the auntie, uncles and cousins who spun up hair salons, barbershops, daycares, restaurants and classrooms inside living rooms, kitchens, gardens and basements. Businesses that experimented with mutual aid and refused to replicate the carceral choreographies they might have witness or experienced in their neighborhoods or at their jobs. These stories are not new, disability and complex trauma sometimes renders us unable or unwilling to hold "traditional jobs". Entrepreneurship and creative lives of refusal aren't always born out of courage, sometimes they're born out of necessity and needs capitalism just can't hold. What creative strategies can black feminism teach us about surviving systems designed to fail us?ResourcesRegister for the Free 2-Part Worldbuilding Workshop Series and Download the Spring 2025 Syllabus: https://www.seedaschool.com/programSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsFreedom Farm CooperativeWhy Harriet Tubman Is a ‘Powerful' Choice for American Currency'Nurse, Spy, Cook:' How Harriet Tubman Found Freedom Through FoodSojourner Truth, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance”Sankofa SymbolBlack Utopias: Speculative Life & the Music of Other Worlds by Jayna BrownCover Art: Lauren Halsey, Untitled (Parliament) (detail), 2021. Digital collage. Source: MFA Boston
Rigor doesn't equal hard work and ease doesn't equal work that is easy. Asking for help, refusing to resent our capacity, honoring the needs of our body and moving at the speed of creative flow is rigorous work that might require practice if our learned impulse is to habitually bring ourselves to the edge of our capacity in order to feel worthy of the ease of our creative expression. Our art flows out of us like our breath, sometimes the hardest work is to let and protect it.ResourcesRegister for the Free 2-Part Worldbuilding Workshop Series: https://www.seedaschool.com/programSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitations“you're not a perfectionist, you're internalizing capitalism” meme by Ariana Brown (@arianathepoet)Cover Art: Book Scan from Your Satisfaction Is Our Future (2017) by Ayana Zaire Cotton
My intention inside this episode is to reflect, alongside you, on my own journey toward softening inside the sacred practice of bearing witness — both to myself and to each other's becoming. Witnessing myself was painful at first. I was confronted with all the ways I had invented masks sacrificing my comfort while prioritizing the comfort of others, who oftentimes were loved ones. Parents, friends, partners, co-workers, peers, teachers, family members, roommates, the list goes on. When confronting all the layers I had assembled out of survival, I realized I was unrecognizable to myself. I cycled through periods of shame, rage, grief, and ultimately grounded inside compassion. When I stopped running from my authentic self, I was able to face her and in that stillness become a compassionate witness. No longer afraid of my own darkness, longings and desires — terrified that they were threats to my survival — another way forward opened. Inside this compassionate witnessing I realized all my fears held keys to something beyond survival, something like belonging. Through this witness work I began to create safety inside myself. Through this witness work I began to collaborate with loved ones, instead of hide from them, and created safety in my home. Then it spilled over to our neighbors, our streets, our schools. But it started with bearing witness inside the sacred act of coming home to myself again and again. My intention inside this episode is to remind us, worldbuilding happens on various scales of intimacy.ResourcesDownload the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaireSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsDear Mazie, exhibition curated by Amber EsseivaDear Mazie, program “IT'S ALL OUT OF MY ARMS: An Activated Honoring”“Dropping the Mask”, Hidden Brain episodeBrendane A. Tynes's Instagram post on mirror and witness workKaren M. Rose's Instagram post on Venus retrograde, mirror work and ancestral venerationCover Art: Written (2021) by Lorna Simpson. Materials: Collage on paper Dimensions: 15 15/16 x 11 1/16 in (40.5 x 28.1 cm)
My intention inside this episode is to invite us to put some respect on our nervous system. We have done the journaling, we've cultivated all our embodiment practices on our walks and by the water. We've done the divination, breath and mirror work to bring us to this moment where our nervous system is prepared to hold us at our next level of practice. There are new invitations, new calls, new assignments we desire to expand into, but moving in fear might be sneakily disguising itself as “honoring our nervous system”. Our craving for predictable outcomes and comfort can encourage us to play small inside the vision for our creative practices and lives. Inside this episode I invite us to consider the ways we can honor our nervous system by welcoming the transformative discomfort of desire.ResourcesDownload the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaireSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsMyleik Teele's Podcast — 219: Do The Work: Stop Researching, Start Moving“June Jordan Solves the Energy Crisis: Love is Lifeforce” (March 23, 2016) by Alexis Pauline Gumbs published by The Feminist WireCover Art: Nick Cave (b. 1959, Fulton, MO; lives and works in Chicago, IL), Soundsuit Series
My intention inside this episode is to ground us inside the reality that we are constantly changing. Our motivations are changing. Our values might be experiencing a re-boot. And the things that kept us going in the past might no longer be a reliable fuel source. Instead of resenting or resisting our desire to slow down, prioritize our most meaningful relationships, or operate from a place of wholeness….What if we used these changes in our capacity, goals and desires as our new navigation tools and fuel to get us where we actually want to go instead of the destinations we were told to go in search of a false sense of safety? In this episode I'm going to share 5 approaches for staying motivated when ambition rooted in external validation has left your body.Resources Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitations “i am not done yet” by Lucille Clifton. Published in Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980, 1987 Cover Art: Kerry James Marshall, When Frustration Threatens Desire (1990), Dimensions: 81 5/16 x 73 1/16 x 2 inches, Materials: Acrylic and collage on canvas
You dream of serving folks through your process not your personhood. You are an artist, not an influencer. But your process can sometimes feel illegible, even to you. We're clear there are life affirming benefits to illegibility, opacity, poesis and abstraction. We're also clear if we want to serve communities we care about through a creative offer that resources our practice, there needs to be an outline of the transformative journey we will take them through. This is your framework. In this episode I want to go over the power of frameworks and it's creative capacity to build worlds that extend far beyond us. Resources Register for 4-Part Winter Worldbuilding Workshop and/or Enroll into the Treehouse Today: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ― Arundhati Roy Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin Torkwase Dyson, “Torkwase Dyson Reflects on Hyper Shapes”, Metropolis Mag, August 26, 2021 Rees, S. (2019, May 11). “For Arthur Jafa, Black Art is the heart of America”. Sydney Opera House Sojourner Truth, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance" (1864), Source: Met Museum Cover Art: Torkwase Dyson, Selections from Tuning (Hypershape, 200–410), 2018, gouache, ink, and pen on paper, 9 × 12 inches. Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
My intention behind this episode is not only to advocate for the practice of weekly dispatches but to encourage you and empower you with resources to advocate for your song — aka the work that is uniquely yours. Philadelphia-based prison abolitionist Stephanie Keene says people often ask her, “How can I get involved?” Her response is, “Do what it is you're good at”. Right? WE need you inside what you're good at, which is to say YOU need you inside what you're good at. What is your daily, weekly, seasonal practice for showing up inside the chorus of collective liberation? Let's find out together. Resources Enrollment into the Treehouse is now open! Register for the 4-Part Winter Worldbuilding Workshop Series to learn more: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations Ruha Benjamin quotes Stephanie Keene in “Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want” on page 22 “The Mythical Black Artist” published on the Threadings podcast by ismatu gwendolyn “Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space, and Time” by Rasheedah Phillips Cover Art: LaToya Ruby Frazier, “Landscape of the Body (Epilepsy Test)”, (2011). Image Source: Whitney Museum of American Art
In this episode I'm inviting you into this question with me: “Is It Burnout Or The Energetic Expense Of A Spiritual Breakthrough?” Now let's be clear, sometimes it really is burn-out. Sometimes, no…a lot of the times, capitalism, the patriarchal refusal to compensate care work and the lack of a state sanctioned social safety net can really bring us to our knees and leave us feeling burned out. I want to acknowledge that, but what I also want to be emphatically clear about acknowledging is sometimes it is spiritual severance, self-denial and self-negation that is at the core of our exhaustion. What creative invitations have you been resisting? Let's take a look at that and try to answer these questions together. Resources Register for 4-Part Winter Worldbuilding Workshop: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations For the Worldbuilder's Episode 52 “Releasing the Burden of Being Complicit In Our Own Suffering” published July 4, 2024 Karen M. Rose “Happy 2025 + Capricorn New Moon” Guidance Alexis Pauline Gumbs “Live Q&A About Daily Practice” Mundane Miracles with Sonya Renee Taylor “Episode 6: Let Your Old Life Fall Away” *The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry* edited by Arnold Rampersad and Hilary Herbold “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” by Audre Lorde “Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic As Power” by Audre Lorde Cover Art: Mary L. Proctor's Freedom of Expression (1998) Materials: Costume jewelry, buttons, cowrie shells, paint, on wood door. Dimensions: 80 x 30.5 inches. Image Source
In this episode I want to make the case for breaking away from institutions and creating communal containers of healing instead. And because we're all about the spell and the strategy at Seeda School…it is also my intention to make the argument that if you are already writing countless grants, drafting applications, making pitches and proposals and making bids for fellowship in institutions that sometimes (or usually) gets awarded, then you are already good at sales. Through this episode I want to invite you to turn that skill toward creating deeper pathways of empowerment for yourself and your communities, not institutions who siphon our worldbuilding capacity for their own survival. This episode is about our survival, our collective ability to thrive. Resources Register for 4-Part Winter Worldbuilding Workshop: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations Cover Art: Constellations (2015) by Howardena Pindell (American, born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1943). Published by Center for Contemporary Printmaking. Medium: Open bite etching. Dimensions: Sheet: 30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm). Image Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art
So who is perfectionism for? What stops us from hitting publish or inviting folks into an offer? Are we waiting for the somatic safety, self-trust, or sense of belonging we'll magically feel on the other side of a new title, degree, or wave of applause? So often we stall, hesitate on pressing publish, resist releasing an offer we've already thought about so much we could design the entire thing in a weekend, because we want to project the patriarchal premise of expertise or “thought leadership”. But what if we centered our lived experience instead? Resources Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations Transformer DC — E:17, “Zines” Program Ipsy Bipsy Studio “The Myth of the Expert Therapist: Dismantling Colonial and Classist Lies of Mastery” by @pat.radical.therapist Cover Art: Troy Montes-Michie, “From El Paso to Harlem: Troy Montes-Michie explores the subversive history of the zoot suit” published by Document Journal. Photography by Fujio Emura. “I think that's what's nice about the suit, because it was seen as this flamboyant, garish garment, but it had a function for dancing. The person wearing it needed that legroom so the seams wouldn't burst.” — Troy Montes-Michie
I chose the path of tech and software engineering out of creative curiosity, yes. But on some level, if I'm being real, I also chose it because it would, perhaps, make my parent's sacrifice mean something. It was impressive, it was something they could brag about on Facebook. And, at the time, my inner child connected being impressive with worthiness. She connected being small with love-ability. She connected following orders with freedom from punishment. She connected suppressing desire with survival. In this episode we explore the ways our creative practice invites us to make new connections. Because inside the erotic as power, we find our fear based connections can't hold for long. Resources Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations Subscribe to Kening Zhu's newsletter here June Jordan, “Poem About My Rights” from Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005) “currency for connection” — Dez Davis Cover Art: Dinah Young, Roadside grave. Photo: William Arnett, 1997
There is no such thing as an independent artist. We judge ourselves for having needs constantly. The reality of interdependence may look different for us in different seasons of our lives. In one season we might need the help of our families to provide shelter (like I did). In another season we might need the companionship of a partner or a pet. In another season we might need the trust and respect of our peers to engage with our work. In other seasons we might need our communities to rally around our mutual aid requests and bids for care. Perhaps underneath the craving for safety is really the desire for relation that doesn't terrify us. In this episode we call our power back to us by surrendering to the truth of interdependence. Resources Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations Sonya Renee Taylor, Season 1, Episode 1: It's A Breautiful Life Mariame Kaba said on being safe, “I don't believe I can posses safety. Because I don't think safety is a thing. I think safety is a relation” Thomas Berry says “we are in between stories”. Which story are you telling? Cover Art: El Anatsui, Royal Slumber, 2023. Aluminum and copper wire, 358 x 475 cm. (Source: October Gallery)
We talk more about this in Thursday's Worldbuilding Workshop, but you may have seen the quote going around “if it's not free, it's neither radical or revolutionary”. I want to start off by saying I disagree. Equitable, anti-capitalist, values aligned resource exchange that is accountable to the communities we serve and the planet we inhabit can be some of the most radical and revolutionary work we do. In this current economic system, “free to you” just means the money is coming from somewhere else and a lot times that chain of funding is obfuscated, which can make accountability tricky if not intentionally impossible. In this episode I want to invite us to consider the ways in which pricing our offers for sustainability doesn't have to compromise the integrity of our work, in fact I want to propose it can actually empower and actualize the worlds we dream of building. Learn More About Seeda School Enroll into the Treehouse Annual Membership here (Enrollment Closes October 21st!) Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop series and download the Fall 2024 Syllabus here Subscribe to the Seeda School newsletter here Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations DISTRIKT, “The Underground” (2015), Issue 1 Dez Davis, conscious coach for impact forward business owners, industry leaders and seasoned change-makers. Sonya Renee Taylor's Patreon Saidiya Hartman, Interview With Rizvana Bradley. Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe pg. 165 Cover Art: Keeping the Culture (2010) by Kerry James Marshall (b.1955) Medium: Oil on Board Dimensions: 76.2 x 121.9 cm. (30 x 48 in.) Source: Artnet
This episode is for our Libra eclipse moment, it's especially for YOU if you've been wanting more balance and clarity inside your practice. If you're overwhelmed by the sheer number of your ideas and desires on your heart then listen up! This is the worldbuilder's dilemma but it is also our power. So let's dive in. Learn More About Seeda School Enroll into the Treehouse Annual Membership here Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop series and download the Fall 2024 Syllabus here Subscribe to the Seeda School newsletter here Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic as Power by Audre Lorde Finding Our Way Podcast with Prentis Hemphill and Sonya Renee Taylor Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (page 8) by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson La Marr Jurelle Bruce (@the.afromantic) Instagram Post Cover Art: Julie Mehretu, Stadia II, 2004, ink and acrylic on canvas, 108 x 144 inches Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh) © Julie Mehretu
Today I want to talk about the permission I had to give myself to pivot before I could invite anyone else into the transition. Today I want to talk about how sneaky scarcity mindset can be, even with the abundance of wisdom, tools and skills we've learned inside our journey of transformation. Today I want to talk about why, after a summer of experimenting with 3 different offerings (a retreat, a monthly membership and accepting applications for a 1:1 service-based offering), I am bringing the Seeda School paid-offer ecosystem back down to 1 core offering. Learn More About Seeda School Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop series, Download the Fall 2024 Syllabus and learn more about the Treehouse Annual Membership here Subscribe to the Seeda School newsletter here Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Referenced Inside the Episode Treehouse Members: shivani mehta bhatia and Nadia Wolff of @vessel.work Retreat Alumni Offers: Olivia Vagelos is helping us design experiences for radical imagination, Giada Centofanti offers regenerative coaching, Kay Brown welcomes you into The Clearing and Arabelle Sicardi offers a fragrance centered creative container @mythsofcreation, “trusting ourselves: a mini class in 9 slides” Summer 2024 Are.na Channel Cover Art: A black and white film photograph of David Hammons creating his “body prints”. The photograph is titled “David Hammons, Slauson Studio” (1974) by Bruce Talamon. Source: Studio Museum of Harlem
Last week we talked about how the journey is the dream and the destination is the practice through the metaphor of teaching and learning. I want to pick that thread back up. Just as I believe creativity is the spiritual disposition of our species, I want to argue curiosity, teaching and learning are organic to our ways of being as well. So organic the debate of nature vs. nurture has been going on for centuries now. Today, I'm less interested in teasing out the difference between the gifts we're taught and the gifts we're born with. What I'm more interested in teasing out is what happened to us and how can the lessons we learned along the way serve others? Learn More About Seeda School Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop series and learn more about the Seed A World Retreat here Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself here Subscribe to the Seeda School newsletter here Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Referenced Inside the Episode The Bluest Eye (pg. 17) by Toni Morrison Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire White Supremacy Culture — From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001 Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study Series edited by J. Kameron Carter and Sarah Jane Cervenak Cover Art: Two black girls look out the window of a “Freedom School”. © Ken Thompson, United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. Image Source
Maybe you've been talking yourself out of taking a creative risk for months, maybe years just like I have. A life is something we create, too. Maybe your creative risk is leaving a job with an abusive company culture, moving to a new city or removing yourself from relationships where your power is perceived as a threat to neutralize instead of divine intelligence to collaborate with. Whatever transition is tugging you toward its trail, whatever creative calling won't leave you alone, I need you to know the journey IS the return on investment. Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop series and learn more about the Seed A World Retreat here. 12 month payment plans for the retreat are now available! Register for the 2-PART workshop series where you'll learn more about resourcing your interdisciplinary practice through a creative offer. Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself here Subscribe to the Seeda School newsletter here Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Chakaia Booker (b.1953), O, 2001. Materials: Rubber, tires, wood, steel Dimensions: 55 h × 36 w × 47 d in (140 × 91 × 119 cm). I was prompted to return to Booker's work when I made contact again with one of her sculptures, Egress, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
This isn't an ableist episode full of executive function shame but it is an episode in honor of Virgo Season asking what are our systems, processes and practices for getting shit done and feeling good while doing it? I've been there, the over-extended teacher inspiring a classrooms worth of epiphanies but too tired to go home and fill the cup from which the curriculum flows. Maybe you've been there too, the over-extended teacher with a depleted capacity for your own curiosity. The healer with an over-committed calendar leaving no time to tend to your own spirit. The community organizer growing exhausted from the demands of parasocial relationships while your closest, most nourishing relationships suffer. How might checking in with our longings, our boundaries, our needs and nurturing a relationship within ourselves where we're allowed to want, to desire, to create, to rest, cultivate more secure attachments and relationships beyond ourselves? Invitations Apply to the Fall 2024 Implementation Accelerator here: https://www.seedaschool.com/accelerator. This program is for you if you want to join us in the Fall 2024 Retreat and work 1:1 with me on implementing the pleasure practices and web portals that will support you in setting up the tech/sales backend and frontend infrastructure for inviting folks into your creative offer by the end of the year. Subscribe to the Seeda School newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Adventures in Paradise is the third studio album by Minnie Riperton issued in May 1975 by Epic Records. On the album cover photographed by Kenneth McGowan, Minnie is seen sitting serenely next to a lion with baby's breath in her hair and in front of a blue background.
Let's talk numbers. The “enough number” concept is looking at the expenses in your life and business and determining a revenue goal or baseline for living comfortably instead of living in the cycle of incessant growth for growths sake. I've seen and heard this concept discussed in multiple workshops, YouTube videos, panels and podcasts over the years. Probably because establishing an "enough number" in the beginning is a good idea and fetishizing infinite, up and to the right, hockey stick growth is not only a bad idea but goes against many of our core values. But what I can't stop thinking about is: Maybe there are other ways to stay in integrity with our values and business growth without putting literal and subconscious caps on our potential revenue and impact? Links and Resources: Apply to the Fall 2024 Implementation Accelerator here: https://www.seedaschool.com/accelerator. This program is for you if you want to join us in the Fall 2024 Retreat and work 1:1 with me on implementing the pleasure practices and web portals that will support you in setting up the tech/sales backend and frontend infrastructure for inviting folks into your creative offer by the end of the year. “Can You REALLY Be An Ethical Millionaire?” is the title of the Hello Seven podcast episode mentioned in this episode. It features a conversation between Rachel Cargle, Sonya Renee Taylor and Rachel Rodgers. Again, I don't agree with everything shared in this episode but it feels relevant to today's discussion. Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Music video still from "Came Back for You". A song by Lil' Kim from her third studio album La Bella Mafia, released on March 4, 2003. It is the closing track on the standard edition of the album. The song samples the 1971 song "Didn't We" by Irene Reid.
As a heads up, if you're listening to this on Monday, July 29th enrollment into the Treehouse closes tonight and it's $67 bucks to join! The Treehouse is a monthly membership holding you accountable to weekly returns to your Zone of Desire through live workshops, open studios, guided meditations and black feminist worldbuilding tools. I hope you'll join us inside The Treehouse! Our first workshop inside is on August 6th and it's all about collaborating with our ancestors, desires and intentions inside our Weekly Dispatches. Enroll in the Treehouse Membership and Join Us August 6th: https://www.seedaschool.com/treehouse The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk Hidden Brain episode “Healing 2.0: Change Your Story, Change Your Life” A summary of Jonathan Adler's findings can be found in “Our Personal Stories Matter for Our Mental Health” The study conducted by Gail Matthews at The Dominican University of California on “The Impact of Commitment, Accountability, and Written Goals on Goal Achievement” Hidden Brain episode titled “You 2.0: WOOP, WOOP!” Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Sylvia Wynter Source: Image courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library
I hope you'll Discover your Weekly Dispatch with us this Thursday, July 25th at 12pm EST in the last live Worldbuilding Workshop I'll be giving on the Treehouse for the year. The Treehouse is a monthly membership holding you accountable to weekly returns to your Zone of Desire through live workshops, open studios, guided meditations and black feminist worldbuilding tools. And enrollment is now open! It's $67 bucks a month, enrollment closes on Monday, July 29th. Join us inside the free workshop on the 25th to learn more. Enroll in the Treehouse Membership and/or register for free Worldbuilding Workshop to discover your weekly dispatch and learn more before enrolling: https://www.seedaschool.com/treehouse (Enrollment closes Monday, July 29th, 2024) This Week's Newsletter: Remembering Yesterday, Practicing Today, Creating Tomorrow “Creative life of refusal” is language borrowed from Alexis Pauline Gumb's essay “The God of Everyday” Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Adrian Piper, *Decide Who You Are: Right-Hand (Constant) Panel,* 1992. Silkscreened image-text collage printed on paper mounted on foamcore, silkscreened text. 185.4 cm x 109.2 cm. Various public and private collections. Copyright: Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
Who are we outside of white supremacy culture? Perhaps the simple answer is healers, holders, stewards. Perhaps the simple answer is the people that refuse, repair and restore. And perhaps we don't have to go anywhere to learn these skills, perhaps the best teachers and stories are already embedded in our intuition and ancestry. Perhaps the stories they're whispering invite us into a culture with more bearable and breathe-able characteristics where perfectionism becomes improvisation, individualism becomes collectivism and “right to comfort” becomes “right to transformation”. Download Syllabus or Register for Workshop (Syllabus Included) Here: https://www.seedaschool.com/treehouse This Week's Newsletter: The River That Swallows All Rivers “Creative life of refusal” is language borrowed from Alexis Pauline Gumb's essay “The God of Everyday” Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (PDF) by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Referenced in podcast: Chapter 2 “Revolutions in Understanding Mind and Brain”, a subsection called “Adaptation or Disease” on page 38. “White Supremacy Culture” (PDF). From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001. Shared inside “Queering Wealth” workshop facilitated by Jezz Chung and Mengwen Cao! “These scalar experiments and mobile laboratories are speculative projects that envision new modalities of relation and offer blueprints for unanticipated existence.” — Saidiya Hartman, “Crawlspace Manifold” (February 12, 2023), published in “Torkwase Dyson: A Liquid Belonging” (October 3, 2023), pg.14 Cover Art: Lorraine O'Grady (American, born 1934). Art Is . . . (Girl Pointing), 1983/2009. Chromogenic photograph in 40 parts, 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.64 cm.) Edition of 8 + 1 AP. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York.
I too, have put more value in the things that hurt because suffering is familiar. I know her. I know suffering. And I have plenty of evidence that the shelter of suffering has kept me safe, kept me “out the way”. But at what cost? There is rent for living underneath the shelter of suffering. As with everything, there is a sacrifice. The cost was often my inner child who needed me to tend to her wounds but I couldn't bear her pain so I just kept looking away. The cost was often my body which needed my attention, my care, my tenderness, my grace but was often treated as a liability instead. The cost was often my dreams that needed my power, my protection, my faith but seemed too wild to be safe, too pleasurable to count on, too gooooood to be true. I just want us to consider, if only for this moment, how exhausting it is to be in perpetual disbelief of our power. Download Syllabus or Register for Workshop (Syllabus Included) Here: https://www.seedaschool.com/treehouse This Week's Newsletter: I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance Sojourner Truth artifact: "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance” (1864) Karen M. Rose's post on the Cancer New Moon Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals “Creative life of refusal” is language borrowed from Alexis Pauline Gumb's essay “The God of Everyday” Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Augusta Savage with her sculpture Realization in 1938. Collection of The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center. Photo: Courtesy of CCS Bard. I came across this photo after/at a talk given by the curator Nana Adusei-Poku presenting her research on “Black Melancholia”. “Black Melancholia pushes beyond the iconography of melancholia as an art historical subject and psychoanalytical concept to subvert highly racialized discourses in which notions of longing, despair, sadness, and loss were not only pathologized, but also reserved for white cis (fe-)male subjects. The exhibition aims to create a generative space for inspiration, solace, and refuge through a presentation that blends new and recent works with pieces from the late 19th to mid-20th century by artists whose careers never reached full recognition or potential during their lifetimes due to systemic erasure.” — CCS Bard
I almost titled this podcast “On Aligning Your Practice with Your Capacity and Surrendering to the Air”. Both work. A question for you: What would it feel like to pause and breathe into a deep, longgggg stretch instead of a sprint? I need to continue challenging myself. Rigor, change and curiosity are the electricity of my life, I'm clear on that. Capricorn rising, Gemini Sun over here. But what might it look like to prioritize the steady over the surge, the flow over the wave? What might it look like to prioritize the practice over the launch? Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop, “Seed A Practice Rooted in the Truth of Your Desire” and check out the Worldbuilder's Way Compass here. Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Off the Grid episode titled, “Success is a Cycle (& Sometimes That Sucks)” by Amelia Hruby Cover Art: Amy Sherald, If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it (2019) Oil on canvas. Overall: 130 × 108 × 2 1/2in. (330.2 × 274.3 × 6.4 cm)
I'm sure you've seen it and maybe even felt it, experienced it. Manifestation is everywhere. Folks are talking about it on TikTok, Instagram and I wouldn't even be surprised if it's reached LinkedIn. Point being, the gospel of the woo-woo crew is spreading. We out here y'all! And thank goodness. I think this is a good thing, that we are learning how to see without images as Toni Morrison puts in her Nobel Lecture in 1993 when invoking the power of language. But how might we take this practice even further…how might we listen to the images while practicing a grammar of black feminist futurity? Seeda School Links Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop: Seed A Practice Rooted in the Truth of Your Desire Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Citations “You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures.” — Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture (December 7, 1993) Tina Campt, “Quiet Soundings: The Grammar of Black Futurity.” Listening to Images, p. 17. Cover Art: Martina Bacigalupo, Gulu Real Art Studio (2014) Image Description: In “GULU_kid 5” a sitter is in front of a red background wearing an oversized checkered blazer atop a navy blue dress of many crescent moons. A small child, also in blue, is resting their head on the sitters lap who has a white box where their head used to be.
Recently I had the absolute honor of being in conversation with Seeda School alumni, Ravon Ruffin Feliz. Ravon who goes by she/they is a cyber anthropologist, writer, educator and founder of Citation Studio, a Black feminist experimental thinking studio mapping the possibilities of computing, archives, and nature with/on/for/at the internet. Born in Chicago, now based in the Bronx — she has worked in the arts and culture sector for 10+ years, tending to public engagements with art, archives and the internet, URL and AFK (away from keyboard). Ravon is also the steward of the “Glossary for an Anti-Colonial Black feminist Critical Media Ecology”, tenderly referred to as the ABC Glossary as a short hand. They are building the glossary inside “New Terms and Conditions”, a newsletter they launched in January of this year. In the Preface of New Terms and Conditions, they speak clearly stating, this is “an attempt to define terms like cloud, seed, garden, and data, that make visible the exploitation on our land, our resources, and our communities, and to address the exploitations that are hiding in plain-sight. and even more so, begin to liberate these terms from the lips of our oppressors.” Inside this Episode: Journey of Transformation Embodying Citational Practice Glossary as Black Method Notes on an Ecological Approach The Archive is Alive Resources: Follow Ravon's Studio: Citation Studio Follow Ravon on Instagram: @arayveeohen Subscribe to Ravon's Newsletter: New Terms and Conditions Connect to Ravon's Are.na: Follow Their Research Channels Subscribe to Ravon's YouTube Channel: The Moody Minimalist Download Seeda School's Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School's Newsletter for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool
These are just some reflections I jotted down during my birthday week and writing retreat in Shenandoah Valley. As the podcast title suggests this was my golden year. I turned 31 on the 31st of May and after being away for a few weeks it felt right to punctuate this moment of return with some reflections ahead of the release of the guest podcast episodes. Let's go… Here's 1 reflection out of 31: Artist is starting to feel like an insufficient title (for me) because it's becoming clear you can be an artist and not dedicate every fiber of your imagination to black trans future. You can be an artist and stay silent on the overlapping genocides. You can be an artist and not wear a mask. I want to live into what it means to be an abolitionist instead, this is the framework I want to be accountable inside of. Moving forward, I want not living in alignment to my values to be incoherent against the backdrop of what I proclaim to be. Links: Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool #CITEBLACKWOMEN by Cite Black Women Collective Assemblage: Baby's Breath by Kay Brown Intimate Practice by Shivani Mehta Bhatia somatic semantics by Nènè Mk "the scales of solidarity and safety when we wanna chill with our kinfolk" by Denise Shante Brown
The invitation of “safety as relation” (Mariame Kaba) is a huge one in a world that has taught us safety is the opposite of relation. A world that tries to convince us, with all it's tools, that safety is domination, exploitation, segregation, etc. We are being called to be creative in a context where control and certainty are not introduced as triggering, but surrendering to each other's gaze and no longer being strangers is taught to be the most triggering act we can imagine. Can we see how the core trauma of these systems of oppression is making us terrified of each other? THAT'S its animating, organizing framework. Being so terrified of the other that we can't see the paralyzing fear of ourselves. What happens when we turn this creative bind into a creative prompt? Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Paul Robeson, poem by Gwendolyn Brooks “Refusing Colonial Categorization and Claiming Fractal Possibility: Toni Morrison was in my dream yesterday...” (Nov 13, 2023) by Ayana Zaire Cotton Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Torkwase Dyson, Liveness and Distance, 2022, acrylic and wood on canvas, 90-1/2" × 72-1/2" × 2-3/4" (229.9 cm × 184.2 cm × 7 cm) Source: A Liquid Belonging
Only YOU can create the offer calling on your spirit. Some creatives will say, “if you don't create your idea someone else will”. That's bullshit. There's only one YOU, with YOUR unique lived experience and YOUR journey of transformation. So, no. No one else can create the offer calling on your spirit. Join us this spring, take your offer from spirit to material and witness the magic that's been begging to be actualized all along. Resources: Enroll into the Seed A World Retreat by Monday, April 29th, 2024 here. Register for the last Worldbuilding Workshop of the season if you have any questions before enrolling! Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Neta Bomani — Dark matter objects: Technologies of capture and things that can't be held Martine Syms — The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto Sonya Renee Taylor — Where Do I Want A Slave?: AI and the White Male Imagination Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Jack Whitten, Atopolis: For Édouard Glissant (2014), Source: MoMA
"May our visibility be an offering of gratitude to those we dedicate our practice to. The ancestors, past selves, younger cousins, teachers and non-human creatures we owe our breath and possibility to. We didn't come from nowhere. We come from the freedom fighters who took their imagination to the streets, we come from the parents whose direct action was reading us Tar Beach at night, we come from the hands that prepared the meals for the meeting. Praying hands. We come from all the black feminist theory we now get the privilege to rehearse in theater of the street, the home, the classroom. I show up if only to say thank you, thank you, thank you. It wasn't in vain, it wasn't in vain because of you I am possible. It wasn't in vain. Because of you WE are possible." — Ayana Zaire Cotton Resources: Enroll here using code EARLY-SPRING-24 for $100 off Register for the last Worldbuilding Workshop of the season if you have any questions before enrolling! Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Cover Art: Tschabalala Self, Out of Body, 2015. Oil and fabric collage on canvas 72 × 60 inches (182.9 × 152.4 cm). Photo by Charles Mayer. Acquavella Galleries. © Tschabalala Self
The fire of our surrender brought down the walls and created a clearing. We all have our own field guides to teach from inside the clearing we will turn into a classroom. How will you shape your journey of transformation into lesson plans all about love? How has love transformed you? Resources: Register for the Worldbuilding Workshop Series Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly essay and podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool won't you celebrate with me By Lucille Clifton Cover Art: Rachel Jones, SMIIILLLLEEEE, 2021 Material: Oil pastel, oil stick on canvas Source: Thaddaeus Ropac
Our breath is the new syllabus. Our survival is the new curriculum. But where is our classroom? This critical geography we must carve out to practice the dis-order that our new world calls for. Black feminist pedagogies have always been critical to my practice. It wasn't enough to inhale black feminist research — I had to lick it — I had to play with it — I had to stir it — I had to serve it — I had to perform it — I had to breathe it. This was the desire that seeded Seeda School. Inspired by a character that could breathe when I couldn't seem to catch mine. Resources: Register for the Worldbuilding Workshop Series Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly podcast and essay releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool 3 Body Problem Scene (Youtube) Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “The God of Every Day” published by Topical Cream on December 22nd, 2021 Cover Art: Beverly Buchanan, “Three Familiar (A Memorial Piece with Scars), 1989 [courtesy of the Chrysler Museum of Art, gift of David Henry Jacobs, Jr.] Source: “Beverly Buchanan, Life on the Line” published by Art Papers. Image Description: Three, small, shacks collaged with wood, paint, nails, metal and fire — leaning, grieving, singing, dancing.
There's a consistent theme I'm noticing on the other side of my season of surrender. When I'm not being particularly nice to myself I'll notice myself get frustrated with my capacity. Trying to figure out why I'm not able to lock in like I use to, put in the same amount of hours as I used to, produce as much or as quickly as I used to — both inside my job (stewarding Seeda School) and my art practice (writing science fiction in the bathtub). When inside this frustration, I have to remind myself, before my season of surrender, I was operating in complete misalignment with my desire and the pace of my body. The fuel that was charging me was external validation so I was operating in self-sacrificing ways. Exerting domination over my creative spirit and body — it's no wonder I was more productive. I was constantly dissociating and ignoring my needs, working through meals and feasting on praise instead. Resources: Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Revisit Newsletter & Podcast: Season of Surrender Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN/Radical WRITING, edited by Erica Hunt and Dawn Lundy Martin The Wild Beyond: With and For the Undercommons by Jack Halberstam Cykofa: The Seeda Origin Story by Ayana Zaire Cotton Cover Art: R.S.V.P. sculptures activated by Senga Nengudi and Maren Hassinger in “Performance Piece—Nylon Mesh and Maren Hassinger,” (1977) (Photo by Harmon Outlaw, Pearl C. Wood Gallery, Los Angeles. Courtesy RedLine Gallery.)(Source: Hyperallergic)
This week I want to return to the Seeda School newsletter originally published on December 4th, 2023 titled, “What is Your Creative Offer?”, subtitle: “A Questionnaire to Oneself”. In it I share why worldbuilding has been such an essential method for me. But “Why Worldbuilding?” is a question I've been getting again lately so I wanted to revisit the question inside this podcast in order to invite you to join me in building worlds as containers for actualizing our audacious desire. How? Stay tuned for the strategy, tip and affirmations to remember towards the end of the episode. Resources: Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Revisit Newsletter — ”What is Your Creative Offer?: A Questionnaire to Oneself” Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power” (1978) Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture from December 7, 1993 Cover Art: Wangechi Mutu, In Two Canoe, 2022. Bronze, 180 × 68 × 72 in (457.2 × 172.7 × 182.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery. © Wangechi Mutu
I'm watching the sharp edges of the second hand turn into a feather here. Here in the space between the real and the infinite, feeling real infinite these days. Working alongside you, body doubling — I am elsewhere, I am here, WE ARE HERE. Emphatically here and the air is heavier. Our breathing is heavier. Our breathing is like fire now. Weightless and heavy with life. Tune into this episode for a strategy, a tip and invitation to remember how to breathe fire. Resources: Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Subscribe to Seeda School Substack for weekly podcast releases straight into your inbox Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool The quote, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" is by Emma Goldman Cover Art: A screenshot from HBO's Love Craft Country created by Misha Green. In this still from "Rewind 1921" (S1:EP9), at the 42:40 timestamp, Hattie grabs Leti's hand to pray as she holds the Book of Names and the house around them burns. During this scene there is audio of Sonia Sanchez reading "Catch the Fire" amidst the backdrop of the Tulsa Massacre.
Okay so I'm making twice as much as I was making with much more control over my income but I still don't feel as secure as I felt with my salaried position, when I was working for a company I had no control over. Why is that? Because I am so used to, have been taught to, have been socialized and expected to relinquish the power of my belief, attention and faith to sources outside myself. Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: Download Here Subscribe to Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzaco Follow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschool Mariame Kaba in an interview on the Seizing Freedom Podcast with Kidada E. Williams
Instead of the “What should I do?” question, here are 3 questions I want to leave you with: Which role will you choose? What container will your practice it in? Will it be through a creative offer, the garden or the 2 hour container in the morning you have before the house wakes up? Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, who will you practice this role WITH? These are questions we ask in the Seed A World Retreat and I want to pose them to you here. Let me know by responding at info@seedaschool.com. Resources: Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself Slow Factory's Roles & Callings for Collective Liberation
Suddenly, my job no longer worked. I put in my resignation letter September 2020. Suddenly, my romantic relationship no longer worked. I ended it the spring of 2021. Suddenly, the non-existent boundaries in all of my relationships, family, friends, community members had to be reflected on and invented. This is because my job, my romantic relationship, my lack of boundaries were all oriented around me trying to get my unmet needs from childhood, met externally. Subscribe for weekly love letters: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ "We Will Not Innovate Our Way Out Of White Supremacy: A letter to my 19 year old self" newsletter mentioned in episode How to Start Working for Yourself, with Bear Hebert podcast episode Pre-order: "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie
Enrollment closes on January 29th at midnight! Enroll in the Seed A World Retreat Here: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Your creative desire makes space for our collective imagination. Join us inside this creative retreat and attend 9 weekly workshops and 9 weekly office hours based on Seeda School's worldbuilding framework. You'll be developing your creative offer alongside a committed community of fellow worldbuilders who will offer feedback and accountability. Seeda School's Worldbuilding Framework consists of nine critical action steps with three major milestones: Deciding on your creative offer, developing the framework for your offer and releasing your offer. Leveraging the worldbuilding power of storytelling the framework takes the form of a story circle, invoking a circular practice you can return to for years to come.
What irresistible portals are the people you dream of serving waiting on? Offers as containers that might bring the two worlds spinning away from each other a little closer, if only for a moment, but just long enough for us to experiment with inventing new models of belonging, cooperative economics and mutual aid that build on the old ones. Generating money that will go to mutual aid request flyers and loved one's Venmo accounts instead of the stock market and the distance between the two worlds spinning away from each other decreases little by little. Using our time, art, ideas, sweat, tears, spit trying to pay back a social debt that can never be repaid we dream up creative offers with the full hearted belief that this is just one strategy of millions to help us collectively divest and make more space for our liberatory quilting. Register for free upcoming workshop: https://www.seedaschool.com/workshop Enroll in the Seed A World Retreat: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Read this week's newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/making-goals-for-a-future-we-dont Follow me on Instagram & Threads: https://www.instagram.com/ayzaco/
The number of things we have to unlearn is unquantifiable, but I know the one thing we must set fire to is continuing to allocate an ounce of our power and meaning making to systems that are only satiated by our death. When we slow down we understand the new year goal setting frenzy is connected to our longing to control the chaos and to carve out meaning in the spacetime of the abyss. The gift of acknowledging this craving with compassion, grace and the full awareness of our power is we get to direct this species-wide compulsion toward something much more intentional and aligned with our aliveness. Register for free upcoming workshop: https://www.seedaschool.com/workshop Check out the framework and download the syllabus: https://www.seedaschool.com/program “I do not set goals in January!! I am GERMINATING” by Ismatu Gwendolyn: https://www.patreon.com/posts/i-do-not-set-in-96189999 Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic as Power by Audre Lorde: https://stilluntitledproject.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/audre-lorde-sister-outsider-the-uses-of-the-erotic-1978.pdf Read this week's newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/making-goals-for-a-future-we-dont Follow me on Instagram & Threads: https://www.instagram.com/ayzaco/
In search of our mother's gardens we found a path. Keeping that path “well-trodden” so others may find it too is our only assignment. What's your purpose? That's impossible to know and that's okay because we're following the truth of our desire instead. What does this look like? It looks like releasing control of the project and signing up for the practice, laying perfectionism to rest. “The form will find itself”, is what the abolitionist science fiction writers, mutual aid practitioners also known as aunties and working class folk who carve out enough softness from the abyss to sing on Sunday, told me. The facts will make you lose your mind so on the well-trodden path, paved with black feminist praxis, we pick up feeling instead. Insisting on only what feels good, pleasure becomes an organizing framework for the practice. The truth of our desire becomes a compass, the practice is trusting it's leading us in the right direction. Register for free Worldbuilding Workshop to learn more about the Seed A World Retreat: https://www.seedaschool.com/workshop Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to Seeda School Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com Seeda School Website: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Seeda School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedaschool/ Mentioned in the episode: Zoé Samudzi (https://www.instagram.com/babywasu) & https://www.instagram.com/deathworkwithshiv
All that running, until 2020 when I finally ran out of steam. Unhealthy work habits and a total lack of boundaries kept me distracted for years. In the absence of that distraction was nothing but the stillness, the silence, the darkness, the eyes patiently waiting for me to finally choose myself. On September 2nd, 2020 I submitted my letter of resignation and a 3 month sabbatical turned into two years. The season of surrender. Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to Seeda School Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Seeda School Website: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Seeda School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedaschool/
What are our tools, frameworks and creative offers for helping each other navigate this wide open expanse? Worldbuilding is my framework, the Seed A World Retreat is my offering and “The Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself” is the tool I want to share today. Download your very own copy of the questionnaire using the link below! Inspired by “The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself” created by Divya Victor, “The Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself” walks you through four key questions whose answers intersect in ways that allow you to discover your income generating and values aligned offer. The offering that allows you to refuse severance inside your interdisciplinary practice by practicing surrender, spiritual alignment and relation instead. Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself: https://divyavictor.com/the-audre-lorde-questionnaire-to-oneself/ Subscribe to Seeda School Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Seeda School Website: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Seeda School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedaschool/
Learn more about the Retreat: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Read this week's newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/refusing-colonial-categorization What if we are making appeals for our “humanity” to empires whose very colonial conception of “human” was given form by excluding certain members of the same species? To put it another way, let's consider we are asking the same people who invented the word “human”, in order to dominate other members of the species and the planet, to include us in the project. Perhaps the only way to go about complete domination over a land and it's species (including it's people) is to invent a word that creates a delination between “man” and “nature”. The word is born out of contridication, an attempt to separate us from all there is when we are all there is.
Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/fear-cant-survive-a-radical-love Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/program
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