For The Worldbuilders – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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
• Listen to "Off The Grid" interview with Amelia Hruby on Softer Sounds or any podcast player.
• 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.