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Explore every episode of the podcast For The Worldbuilders

Dive into the complete episode list for For The Worldbuilders. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.

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TitlePub. DateDuration
092. Erotic Engineering Principle 002: Invite Your Fear06 avr. 202600:45:11

Our fear invites us into the rites of passage, experiential learning, and embodied pedagogical opportunities unique to our current needs and life journey.

The question is, what does fear want to teach us?

We embrace fear and reasonable doubt because it teaches us WHERE and HOW we long to be RESOURCED — no matter the season of life we’re navigating.

You might want to get a pen and paper. Inside this episode I’ll teach you how to use Erotic Engineering to collaborate with fear to actualize your desire in 3 steps.

Resources

091. Erotic Engineering Principle 001: Make A Decision 16 mars 202600:28:27

Make a daily decision to commit to your dream.

Make a daily decision to commit to your truth.

Make a daily decision to commit to your power.

We can decide we already belong at any time.

That daily decision is the practice of aligning your desire with your capacity.

This practice is what I like to call, Erotic Engineering.


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090. Transmuting AI Shame Into Erotic Self-Respect27 févr. 202600:59:17

I’m seeing a lot of folks call for the public shaming of AI-users and AI-defenders. While that gets a lot of social media engagement and while I understand the righteous rage, the frustration, the moral outrage…I also know shame doesn’t work. It’s sticky but not effective. Shame induces silence, but self-respect induces power. What we need right now is to ground down and root in our collective power. Our worker power. That’s why I recorded this episode.


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Citations

  • Cover Art: Jack Whitten, Dead Reckoning I (1980) “In 1980, starting with Dead Reckoning, it was the first time I stood up to do a painting in ten years. It felt good. It felt good to come up off the floor and stand straight…Dead Reckoning is a term I had first heard when I was at Tuskegee, when I was with the Air Force ROTC. It deals with navigation. I remember the instructor explaining, at a certain point, as he put it, “If some shit happens,” [laughs] he says, “you have to make a decision.” Which is your best chance for survival? Do you continue on your present course? Or do you turn around and go back? That was the first time I’d heard that term, “dead reckoning.” Another version is that you throw away all your navigational tools. Get rid of all your tools. Learn to plot, to navigate, no tools. Just go by your heart, go by your feeling. It’s a rich term.” — Jack Whitten (Source: MoMA)
089. You’re More Powerful Than You Allowed Yourself To Imagine, Now What?22 déc. 202500:46:49

My intention inside this episode is to honor all the work you’ve done this year by offering a Winter Solstice spell, inviting you to get curious about the somatic architecture you’re dreaming from inside your next season.

But above all, in this episode I want to celebrate you. Over the past 5 years you have held the overlapping grief of witnessing public lynchings by the hands of the police, a global pandemic we’re still inside of, wildfires and other continuous climate crises and witnessing genocide and humanitarian crises from Palestine to Sudan — not to name the domestic and relational ruptures you’ve tended to on more intimate scales, the new cities moved to, the new homes and communities you’ve had to build. And look at you, still choosing vulnerability, still choosing relation, still choosing love, still choosing to believe in yourself and your values and by extension — still choosing to believe in us. For that I am recording this episode to say thank you. This is my offering of gratitude.


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088. Why You Don’t Have What You Want02 déc. 202500:13:10

Read full newsletter: Why You Don’t Have What You Want — The Missing Link In The Be, Do, Have Framework

Register for free Discovery Workshop: Seed A Sales System Rooted In The Truth Of Your Desired Income


Your cosmic desire steadies the ground as it shifts beneath your feet inside the work of transforming the stories you identify with — providing a much needed update to the “Be ➡️ Do ➡️ Have” framework into “Desire ➡️ Be ➡️ Do ➡️ Have”. As with everything we must ground inside desire first, so let’s start there.


What’s your cosmic desire?

How will it help hold the identity shifting work you’re being called into in this season of your business and worldbuilding practice?

How do we practice remembering knowing what we want isn’t nearly as powerful as knowing why we want it?


Reflecting on these questions is the Worldbuilder’s Way. These are the exact questions we answer inside the new Seeda School discovery workshop, “Seed A Sales System Rooted In The Truth Of Your Desired Income”. Register today to join us.

087. Carving Out SPACE for Creative Ceremony 13 oct. 202500:39:57

This podcast episode is about integration. How do we go forward with all the colonial code, bumping up against the remembrance of our ancestral code? How do we integrate the concrete and the care? The cop in our head and the kid in our heart? How do we invite our fear and our spirit to the table? How might we act as the compassionate mediator? How might that compassionate mediation facilitate a practice of making art? My intention behind recording this episode is to wade inside of some of these questions with you.

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086. Retreating Inside Agency Inspiring Desire Instead of Paralyzing Fear16 sept. 202500:44:24

My intention inside this episode is to invite us to re-calibrate inside our desire. As we search for safety, predictability and control, we can find ourselves impulsively grabbing for the tools of white supremacy culture in an attempt to catch our breath and find our footing once more. We extend deep compassion to ourselves for this reflex, with fascism, state sanctioned violence and the question of survival riding the air, it is no surprise that we may breathe in fear with our latest inhale. Inside this episode we exhale, remembering the tools of white supremacy culture are incompatible with the worlds we are building. The classrooms we’re spinning up in mid air, the apothecaries getting their start in our gardens growing into neighborhood pharmacies, the basements we’re turning into movie theaters streaming love, love, love. And before we know it, we’re impulsively picking up tools of a different kind. Tools for tending to a culture of care, where black life is sacred and shared vulnerability is more appealing than isolating in fear.

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085. Erotically Engineer Your Paid Creative Offering08 sept. 202500:35:48

My intention inside this episode is invite you to consider how you might create an additional stream of income using the erotic skills already alive in your creative practice. This episode is for you if you are currently relying on income from one of three sources: 1) Artist Grants, 2) A College or University or 3) Full-time or part-time work with an organization (be it an institution, non-profit, or otherwise). Maybe you’re relying on income from a mix of all 3 but want to introduce a stream of income that you control. A stream of income in alignment with your Zone of Desire and the creative work you must do anyway. Whether you are an artist, academic or facilitator, you have developed a tolerance for creative improvisation, creative resourcefulness and even creative risk. What might it look and feel like to apply those creative skills to developing a paid offer as an additional income stream whose faucet you can turn on and off at any time? My intention inside today’s episode is to explore that question with you.

Resources


Citations

  • Cover Art: Basket-maker Martha Cayetano. Source: “Exquisite Gullah-Geechee Baskets Are Now on Etsy” published on Hyperallergic
084. Create It, Not In The Future, But Now29 août 202500:29:08

My intention inside this episode is to remind you of that big, juicy, audacious creative vision that is all your own. That desire commensurate with the expanse of your power. That idea, project or offer that only feels intimidating because it is a threat to colonial order and the colonized part of us might be sacred of it. As it should be, but let’s rest in the fact that this is natural and impermanent. Just like fear is an indication of desire, so is the avoidance of our own audacity. Avoidance is different than procrastination. We procrastinate on certain tasks, because the stakes are usually low. We avoid our audacity, because the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. Sometimes we avoid answering the call of our audacious desire because we know it will demand the sort of transformation that changes everything and perhaps that is entirely the point.

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Citations

083. Use Erotic Engineering To Create A Life Rooted In Your Desire07 août 202500:33:48

Erotic Engineering is a wild field of study and practice that uses the erotic as power to design a life rooted in desire. Inside this practice the desire we center is both personal and collective. Erotic Engineering pulls from the work of black feminist poetry, literature and worldbuilding which provides the material we use to create new belief systems that scaffold lives in deeper alignment with our values. It is a method for actualizing desire and putting language to the longings of our interior worlds in order to transform our material world.

Resources

Citations

  • Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic As Power" (1978)
  • Stack Overflow
  • Cover Art: Barbara Chase-Riboud, La Musica Red Parkway / Josephine Red (2007), materials: bronze with red patina and silk dimensions: 73 x 49 x 19 inches (185 x 124 x 48 cm). American artist, novelist, and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939) creates abstract, fluid metal forms that, combined with fibers, comprise a unique visual language. (Source: Glenstone)
082. Professionalism Requires Our Lies, Poetry Requires Our Truth25 juil. 202500:45:16

My intention behind this episode is to invite you to seed a public creative practice through, what we call in Seeda School, “weekly dispatches” for time accountability or “creative dispatches” for time freedom. Whatever your desired relationship with time — committing to a cadence of newsletters, podcasts or videos, as dispatches becomes a public ritual of staying close to yourself. A sacred ceremony of bi-directional witnessing.

Inside this sacred witnessing ceremony we don’t need your “professionalism” we need your poetry. We don’t need your cynicism, we need your care. We don’t need your cool, we need your conviction. At times it can feel easier to write for cover letters, grant applications, school applications or memos on the job because professional development rarely requires our honesty. Some career-conscious spaces even encourage our lies, asking us to leave our politics at the door as if that’s even possible. It can feel harder to write for ourselves and seed a public practice through creative writing, because our poetry demands our truth. Our poetry demands that we acknowledge our pleasure and politics as the only starting points we need to create work worthy of our breath. Inside this episode I share spells for doing exactly that.

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Citations

081. On Bargaining Over The Price of Actualizing Your Desire10 juil. 202500:43:00

Creative actualization demands sacrifice. There’s a saying that goes something like this, “you can have whatever you want, and if you don’t have it you either don’t want it or you’re bargaining over the price”. Now justified political critiques aside, I reference this quote to ask: In what ways are we bargaining over the price of actualizing our desire? Inside this episode I reflect alongside you and the 4 seasons of creative initiation: remembrance, surrender, sacrifice and erotic expression. Sometimes these seasons happen in order, sometimes they are non-linear. Which stage are you in? Will you allow yourself to believe it’s exactly where you’re supposed to be in this season? Let’s stop devising creative ways to get out of taking our own medicine. My intention behind recording this episode is to invite us to allow ourselves to be exactly where we are, willing students of all the wisdom embedded in our current season of transformation and initiation.

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Citations

080. No One Wants Your Perfectionism But White Supremacy27 juin 202500:47:47

At first this episode was titled “There Is No Rigor In Perfection, There Is Rigor In Your Play”. In a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts Hidden Brain, psychologist Paul Bloom describes why play is an essential choreography of aliveness for most human and non-human species. He says it’s essential because it’s a container for “safe practice”. I keep thinking about this phrase, “safe practice”. Oftentimes perfectionism is mistaken for rigor. These two are NOT the same. Perfectionism stops us from starting, rigor invites us to try. The fear rooted in perfectionism is an indication of feeling unsafe inside our practice. My intention inside this episode is to offer spells for cultivating a felt sense of safety inside our practice through rigorous play.

Resources

Citations

  • Cover Art: Lorna Simpson, did time elapse (2024) Materials: Acrylic and screenprint on gessoed fiberglass Dimensions: 259.1 x 365.8 x 3.5 cm / 102 x 144 x 1 3/8 in. "Together, Simpson’s incandescent paintings draw attention to the danger hidden in beauty and, conversely, the beauty hidden in danger. Bringing us face to face with phenomena rarely witnessed by the human eye, they ask us to locate ourselves in the context of the cosmos." (Source: Hauser & Wirth)
079. A Love Song For Conjure Women Cosplaying As Corporate Baddies26 mai 202500:52:56

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.


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078. Working Harder is Unnecessary, Certainty Is An Illusion, Hold On To This Instead01 mai 202500:45:29

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.


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Citations

077. Dropping the Master's Tools, Dreaming Beyond Institutional Support24 avr. 202500:43:20

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.

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076. On Knowing When To Get on Your Zoom or Get in the Bed17 avr. 202500:52:43

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.

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Citations

075. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered LinkedIn When Affirmations Weren’t Enuf08 avr. 202500:58:36

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.

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074. Your Favorite Black Feminist Is An Entrepreneur01 avr. 202500:45:24

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?

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073. 3 Ways to Engage with the Rigor of Ease in Creative Practice 25 mars 202500:43:24

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.

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Citations

  • “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
072. The Fear of Being Witnessed Stemming From A Fear of Witnessing Ourselves18 mars 202500:38:40

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.

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071. My Nervous System Likes Receiving Money for Work that Isn’t Punishing04 mars 202500:44:41

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.

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070. How to Stay Motivated When Ambition Has Left Your Body25 févr. 202500:35:24

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.

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069. Scale Your Impact Without Scaling Your Capacity Through the Power of a Framework20 janv. 202500:30:58

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.


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068. I Sat Down To Script A Podcast And A Poem For The Fire Leaked Out13 janv. 202500:33:42

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.

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067. Is It Burnout Or The Energetic Expense Of A Breakthrough? 04 janv. 202500:51:09

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.

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Citations

  • 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
066. Moving From Convincing Institutions to Convincing The People21 déc. 202400:38:41

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

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
065. Who Is Perfectionism For? Channeling Audacious Visions Into 3 Phases of Creative Business Development12 déc. 202400:56:04

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?


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Citations

064. Becoming Your First Client: The Grief Work of Composting Past Selves and Desires05 déc. 202400:36:21

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


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
063. Calling Our Power Back to Us: All Stories Rooted in Independence Are Lies30 nov. 202400:31:27

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


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)
062. Don’t Focus on Making the Offer Accessible to Everyone Else it Becomes Inaccessible to You14 oct. 202400:39:19

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

061. Design Your Creative Ecosystem: The 3 Nodes of Practice and Your Erotic Center 07 oct. 202400:57:17

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

Cover Art: Julie Mehretu, Stadia II, 2004, ink and acrylic on canvas, 108 x 144 inches Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh) © Julie Mehretu

060. Permission to Pivot: The Transition From 3 Offers Back to 1 30 sept. 202400:50:04

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

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

059. Offering the Wisdom and Skills from Your Journey of Transformation23 sept. 202400:41:14

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

Cover Art: Two black girls look out the window of a “Freedom School”. © Ken Thompson, United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. Image Source

058. The Journey is The Dream, The Destination is The Practice16 sept. 202400:35:34

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.
057. 7 Ways to Establish and Protect a Pleasurable Creative Practice Amidst Life’s Possibilities and Responsibilities09 sept. 202400:50:00

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.
056. Are “Enough Numbers”, Enough? Balancing Our Nervous System, Values and Business Growth29 août 202400:36:07

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.
055. The Psychology of Creative Practice and Belonging 29 juil. 202400:53:13

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.

054. 9 Reasons We Need Your Weekly Dispatch Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow18 juil. 202400:55:46

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.

053. Who Are You Outside of White Supremacy Culture?11 juil. 202400:42:40

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”.

052. Releasing the Burden of Being Complicit In Our Own Suffering04 juil. 202400:39:21

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.

051. Recovering from the Tyranny of Ambition and Detaching from Outcomes27 juin 202400:27:35

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?

050. Manifesting Beyond Survival and Toward Safety20 juin 202400:24:00

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

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.
049. New Terms and Conditions with Ravon Ruffin Feliz13 juin 202401:10:35

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:

048. 31 Reflections at 31 on the 31st08 juin 202401:30:55

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:

047. To Crave Certainty is to Crave a Lie08 mai 202400:39:20

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?

046. Standing On the Abundance Already Inside Your Creative Practice24 avr. 202400:55:05

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:

045. Will You Let Us Perceive You?19 avr. 202400:47:34

"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:

044. Your Journey of Transformation11 avr. 202400:48:19

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:

043. Teach What You Want to Learn04 avr. 202400:40:19

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:

© My Podcast Data · Independent project · Data from Apple & Spotify
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