May 2025: to market, to market
a parable on minding my business
This go-round, I'm shouting myself out for reaching a personal landmark. There's no specific number associated with it; all I can say is, I've shared at least one offering on this platform every month for nearly six months, and the audience has grown steadily in that time. Thank you so much for being here.. you're really witnessing the work in progress.
This month has been about putting things in their place, and building the strength to keep them there. I can only start to tell you about the struggle this has been. All the things I've been talking about here — reckoning with my relationship to manhood, to control, to visibility — they've been sitting in my guts for weeks now. Today they wanted language. It came in clear sentences:
In this story, I never have to suffer the guesswork of survival. I've built a forcefield around myself; I possess all power to shape my value and my meaning. In the best cases, I produce an object, a stand-in for myself. Others celebrate it - and I get to disappear.
Artist, Learner has flowed around these questions from the beginning. I know something in my story has changed when I can share it, as a story. I'm sharing it with you today. It comes with a question:
Even if selling your-Self is not true freedom, how can the work help you reclaim your time, your flesh, and your life?
I started staying home because I told myself the market was too far to walk to. All that time I shielded myself from sun, and I grew thin. I only whispered, only in prayer. On the last day, as the hottest of that hot spell broke, I heard a voice. A chorusing voice, chiming: You are at the wall! You are at the wall! - though I didn't know at the time that's what it way saying.
I closed my eyes. There was a stage far off, a glowing red monument in the mouth of a crater. Before it pulsed a crowd as one. I could see the dirt pooling in sweat on them, mudding their skin. I thought, as the music blasted: But who wins? Who wins all this?
Then my eyes opened and I heard the rustle of leaves. My feet tickled. I reached for the cards, and they told me to stop, just stop something - though in that moment I couldn't tell you what. So I spun myself a tale about abandonment. Wands reversed and cups upturned. I knew it: the smoking was getting to me, I already knew it. And I bargained, okay, for seven days I will not smoke at all. Could I see to the end of my own promise? I strained for it, and as I strained I realized the vision came for free so I got off my knees.
Maybe I stood up too fast. For before me flashed a wall, brick on neon-edged brick. Real angelic shit. In flooded the host I first named seven years ago when I told my therapist, It's like I'm living my life behind glass. My throbbing head yearned toward the wall and I fell through, cast from a height. I was dying, not knowing myself suddenly; renouncing life to come alive again. And so I knew I must convert. To Ifa! Like last time: I knew I must convert to Islam. Or before that: I knew I must convert to Buddhism (if you can even do that).
Because the rug had been pulled from under me, hence me finding, after all that, my bare feet on bare ground. And so it was: I started staying home because I'd taken my shoes off. Standing in that soil, I see the snake, the lizard, and the cat all pass, basking their way through sunlight.
Stories like these show myself the proof: they document the work I do with myself and other QTBIPOC artists who use experimental creative methods to steward cultural knowledge. I’ve been helping artists contextualize their work, reclaim their creative agency, and align with their social, political, and cultural values for over a decade now. Surprise: consistency says a lot about what brings me joy. If you’d like to locate this kind of wisdom in your practice, check out this introduction to my services and email me to book a consultation.
What’s this issue’s question bringing up for you? I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments. If it stirs thoughts for you, and you want to know where the journey through creation takes me next, be sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter — and share it with someone who might get life from it. Until then, be well.