The Garden Space: Recent Episodes
by Ismatu Gwendolyn
The strangest part about terminal illness is how often death comes for a peck on the lips and nothing more. A few weeks ago, I flew home to attend my mother's final affairs. Now we sit, smoothies and champagne glasses, watching a movie to spend time together. It's sunny this Tuesday. Here are reflections from Invisible Beauty on Bethann Hardison, from both me and my mother.
Jazz of the Episode:
Stepping Through The Shadow x Menahan Street Band
Tryin’ Times x Roberta Flack
Estate x Leilo Luttazzi
Slow and Easy x Speedy West
Rainy Day Lady x Menahan Street Band
Love And Peace x Quincy Jones
Read the full essay at ismatu.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
a series of musings nearly entitled, “I am frightened by the way people tire of the world.”
I have had a negative amount of desire to write but Toni Morrison said it’s your job to write when evil wishes to distract you so. Here I am, I suppose. The thesis of today’s musings are that we want the fiction of a happy ending more than we want actual liberation.
Looking for a transcript, sources and links? Read the full work at ismatu.substack.com.
Selected Jazz of the Episode:
Muziqa heywete x Getatchew Mekurya
Afternoon of a Swan x Speedy West
HOW CAN WE MEND A BROKEN HEART x Kahil El’Zabar
Love and Peace x Quincy Jones
A Taste of Honey x Andy Bey, The Bey Sisters
Better Than x Lake Street Drive
Soul Serenade x Aretha Franklin
La notte muore (orchestra) x Sandro Brugnolini
Sweet Leilani x Les Paul & His Trio
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Questions for your consideration: how do I appreciate you well for taking part in this space? And, how best can we a public good? Please whatever comment features you have available and let me know!
ft. Afternoon of a Swan by Speedy West
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Sleep tips for those who struggle to sleep when they could. Essay (and transcript) available at ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Squeeee we finished!!!
I have finally (!!!) finished my reading of the first chapter of How To Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind by Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce and let me tell you, reading it took a bite out of me. It was so difficult and so worth it. Cannot recommend the full text enough!! As per my agreement with Dr. Bruce, this audio reading is only available for 90 days (so that means they all have to come down by June 3rd). DO NOT PROCRASTINATE! Okay toodles!!!
Warmest regards,
Ismatu g.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
A letter written for Bisan, circulated to my constituency:
Peace.
I write to you from the floor of my bedroom in Sierra Leone. Two days ago, Iran launched successful counter-attacks against the apartheid regime occupying the land of Palestine, currently known as Israel (which bombed their embassy in an open act of war on April 1). I can hear construction workers breaking rocks outside my window and the children of the house playing and running and the noise of Freetown traffic in an endless rise and fall. I always find it pertinent to name the moment clearly, as I am always certain tomorrow will not look like today; the things I consider commonplace will be precious and long gone. Some of my mind firmly plants itself in yesterday already: gone are the days where I can see children running and playing in the street— in any street, anywhere in the world— and I do not think of Palestinian children massacred in front of each other. I am in a permanent after. I kneel to pray and recall accounts of young Sudanese women messaging their local religious leaders, asking if they will still be permitted into paradise if they commit suicide to avoid rape from occupying soldiers. I am in a permanent after.
Today is April 15, 2024. Tomorrow will not look like today.
Bisan Owda, a filmmaker, journalist and storyteller, has called the world to strike on several occasions for the liberation of her homeland, Palestine. I feel about Bisan (and Hind, and Motaz, and many others) like I feel about my cousins: I pray for them before bed, asking for their continued protection, wondering for them— the same way I prayed for my family as a child, during Sierra Leone’s own neocolonial war of attrition, or when Ebola came like the angel of death. This is the way I pray for Bisan, and for Palestine: with this heart beating in me that is both theirs and mine. She is my age. Bisan! You are my age! I wish we could have met at university, or at an artists workshop; I feel we would have long conversation. I understand more now about what my auntie dequi means when she says sister in the struggle— that’s how she speaks of indigenous womyn, about Palestinian womyn, about womyn across the colonized world that use every tool they have to resist. Sisters in the struggle. It’s never felt like an understatement— I just feel it in my body now. Sisters (n.): someone who you most ardently for. Someone who you care for such that it compels you to action.
I’m certain many of you feel this for me—this long distance, cross-cultural, transcontinental kinship. Rhita, a stranger turned friend via instagram DMs, had me over for tea on a long layover in Morocco, and we spent at least two hours talking about blooming revolution and healing through art (she’s a musician and she helps pave the way for musicians in Morocco, who fight for their royalties as well as their right to exist. Brilliant). Sisters in struggle: your lens on the world changes mine, and I am grateful for it. Today we are among war; I mobilize and I organize and I pray for a day where we might sit down for tea.
I write to Bisan with the attention of my own constituency to shine light on her calls for a general strike, one of which occurs today, April 15 2024. These urgent asks have been met with lots of skepticism across the Western world: how do we organize something this fast? Does it really matter if I participate? How will one strike solve anything? I write to throw my pen and my circumstance behind you, Bisan. I lend you all (my constituency) my lenses as a teacher, in hopes that I make plain to you why these questions of feasibility assume there is another way out of our current standing oppressions. We have no other option for worldwide liberation that does not include a mass refusal to produce capital.
We occupy a crucial moment of pivot as a species. Victory for the masses feels impossible from the complete waste they lay on anyone who dissents to their power. This feeling is manufactured. The hopelessness is manufactured. We see the insecurity of the nation-state everywhere. Never before has surveillance from the state been so totalitarian— even (especially) through the device likely read this on. I also submit: a conglomeration of ruling bodies who monitor their citizens with paranoia do so because they are very aware of their own precarity.
^this is a very good video if you want to learn more about that claim.
The nation-state, as it currently exists, knows it will fall. Never before have we had this much access to one another in organizing across the world for our good. They know, and we are beginning to find out, this iteration of the human sovereign world (capitalism ruled by white, Western supremacy) is dying. Something else is on the way. The question is what? Will the world that comes after this one be for us or against us?
I hope this set of arguments helps us understand our place in the human narrative, as those that still have the power to stop the machine.
Theses:
(1) The genocide in Palestine is not unique nor novel except in the fact that we can see it in real time.
This is what colonial war has always looked like. Ruthie Wilson Gilmore described the machine perfectly.
“Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death."
― Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
Ruthie Wilson Gilmore is an abolitionist that has radicalized me immensely. To put the above in my terms: racism occurs or made when a group of people (Black, Indigenous, and colonized peoples) are constantly exposed to premature death (in overt ways, such as carpet bombing or slavery, or in more covert ways, like pollution, policy that denies healthcare, poverty wages, restricting access to food). This mass killing comes either with a green light from the state,
or comes from the civilian populace of that oppressive nation-state.
Capitalism in and of itself created the need for racial oppression. The establishment of capitalism required the open and expedited slaughter of indigenous peoples to secure their own land, and the slow-bred, constant slaughter of African peoples as a vehicle to over-harvest lands across North and South America, as well as across Europe. And they continue to expand.
So then: racial capitalism is a death-machine.
There is no way we can transition this world to a new order, where the masses are sovereign over our own lives, without withholding the labor that keeps the death machine going. Striking is not just in a decline of consumption, which is when we refuse to consume the products made by the machine. Radical action occurs when we decline production. That’s the only way to stop the machine in their tracks. If we do not, the machine will continue slaughter for output. Simply put: you can’t just stop buying. We do actually have to stop working.
Nothing about the actions taking place in the Palestinian genocide are new! This is racial capitalism doing what it has always done: slaughtered the indigenous population and embedded heinous acts of violence to crush dissent, exacted a nation-state on the shallow graves, and found or imported a labor force to exploit such that they can strip the land of her resources. It has always been this horrifying.
The only difference now is that we can see the horror live televised, in real time.
(2) we are tasked with mobilization from our new understandings.
We have a sister war now occurring in Sudan, where the superpower benefitting from violent civilian death is the United Arab Emirates (who extract the gold from Sudan in deals with the warring military groups while the people are slaughtered). This is a war of attrition, designed to break the will of the people bit by bit, massacre by massacre until they force consent to military rule. We had wars of similar depravity in the killings of Iraqis in this made up War on Terror by the United States, in the killings of Black radical counter-insurgents in the United States’ second civil war in the 1960s, in the attempted decimation of Viet Nam (again, by the US, there might be a pattern). This is what I mean about wars of colonialism— this is what the annexing of Hawaii looked like. The fall of Burkina-Faso’s revolutionary government. This is just to name a few. It’s happened again and again, and it will keep happening until we pivot away from allowing the technology of the nation-state be sovereign over the earth. This is what the nation-state does under racial capitalism.
(2a) EXTRAPOLATE.
The 15th of April 2024 also marks one year of war in Sudan, which has largely been ignored by Western spectacle. I say all the time your attention is lucrative.
This particular bit is addressed to my constituency: never is this more clear than watching world trials, UN emergency meetings, world mobilization on behalf of Palestine and no such thing for Sudan. I know that Palestinians do not feel good about this. We should not have to be in a state where we have to compete for attention in order to get justice. We should not require spectacle to mobilize for our countrymen! There are no journalist influencers living in Sudan to have risen out as superstars with moment to moment updates— the technological infrastructure and the political landscape simply didn’t align for that. Is this why we don’t care? I am also hyper aware, as a Black American and as a Sierra Leonean, of how no one blinks when Black people die. We were the original capital under racial capitalism. There still is this sentiment, especially among the Western world, that suffering and dying is just… what we do.
We humans are very good at caring for what we can manage to see. I am both heartened and excited by seeing increased conversations, direct actions, fundraisers, for Palestine. The responsibility to the human family is to constantly be in the work of expanding your eyesight— which means that you too care for the people that you might not see every day in your algorithm. The human tapestry, woven together in different colors and patterns, is ultimately one long, interconnected thread. The first step of mobilization that must come from from realizing our situation under racial capitalism is fighting for everyone that suffers from it— not just the people we can see. If we fight situationally, we are set up to lose, because we save one part of the human tapestry while another part burns. Coordinated action can only come from coordinated understanding. No one is free until everyone is free.
(3) Fast. Train. Study. Fight.
Only in a slaveocracy would the idea of freedom fighting and resistance seem mad.
—Mumia Abu-Jamal, 2003 | Black August Commentary on Prison Radio
Fast; train; study; fight is the slogan of Black August, a month of discipline where those active in the fight for liberation remember our political prisoners and dedicate ourserlves to the sharpening of our minds, bodies, and communities in service of liberation. Black August was first commemorated with collective action in 1971 when George Jackson was assassinated by San Quentin prison guards in an attempt to quell the revolutionary spirit he stewarded within the concentration camp of prison enslavement. The article linked above is by Mama Ayaana Mashama, an educator, healer, poet, and founding member of the Oakland Chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement from the Bay.
Black August also acknowledges the amount of life and world-changing victories of resistance that have occurred for Black oppressed peoples in August— everything from the Haitian Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion to the birth of Fred Hampton.
I find these four actions to be the key to mobilization in the practical rather than just the rhetorical or theoretical, especially if you are newly radicalized (like me. I’ve only been radicalized for six years).
What are the practical ways to strike?
Fasting from consumption:
Do not engage in mindless consumption. Do not buy anything from companies who use your dollars to oppress yourself and your neighbor— this includes groceries, gas, flights, fast food, more than that. Do not grease the machine with your dollars. I understand these things are embedded into our day to day society. Resist anyways.
Additionally, fasting during the inaugural Black August included abstinence from radio and television. Last year, my first time fasting for Black August, I fasted from screens. Conscious divestment from the machine includes mind and body, not just dollars.
Training (in mind and body):
Train your attention. Train yourself to notice when you impulse spend. Money is a token you can trade for power. To be in the role of consumer is to constantly trade your chance for power for a momentary comfort— a good feeling, a rush, a high, a status symbol, all of which depreciate for you and all of which give tokens of power to the world-makers currently in charge. Now is the time to build up the muscles of dissent (both the literal and the metaphysical strength and will to act in favor of the people when it is time to).
Study:
You are only as useful to the movement as you are able to use yourself well. Study yourself and your own wants needs and habits. Know intimately your own boundaries, motivations and desires. What is your version of freedom? What are you specifically fighting for? Write it down!
Study your own observable world. Ensure that you are caught up well on the events that surround you. This means local. When you walk around outside, what do you see? First: do you take walks? I would recommend them. Who are your neighbors? What do they do? What do they want? Who are your comrades and who are not? What is going in your local policy?
Study the world that you cannot personally observe (and not just the news that comes through your algorithm). Learn where the stitches of the human tapestry are frayed. Note where they are being or have been burned intentionally. How do you connect to those charred places? What does regeneration and recreation look like?
The backdrop of Sudan’s war saw about eight months of sporadic striking that finally led to the general strike, which then led to the successful popular uprising. Sudan had a successful popular uprising in 2019 because they engaged in strikes, strikes, strikes until they created enough mass action to win. It will never feel like the right time. We create the time we need to mobilize on our best behalf.
Fight:
Fight the impulse to do nothing. You are in a natural state of doing nothing—by design. So better, I should say: you are kept in a default state of believing that you should do nothing. Do not do nothing. The more you do something, the easier it is to do the next thing. Fight the will to accept the world as something that happens above you. You have more power than you think you do.
Fight the urge to act alone.
Fight the urge to shrink from consequence.
Fight the restrictions that inevitably follow dissent.
Also literally engaging in combat training is helpful (for legal purposes I don’t condone violence :P).
(4) Revolution more about beginnings than endings.
Critical mass happens with repeat action. The tide will not change because of some mass quantum leap everyone has in logic and circumstance. It will not come because your neighbor saw you pick up your pitchfork and thought, “oh yes, we need schedule Revolution today, let me grab my chainsaw.” The masses will shift because person after person after person continued to practice small, increasing modes of dissent. Dissent!— such that when powder kegs go off, when moments occur like this, or like Black Lives Matter worldwide uprisings of 2020, moments which break through the numb dissonance we all wade through every day, we have enough discipline to engage in organized action.
General striking needs to be not just for Palestine, but for all the pressing problems that have a time mark on them. If Palestine is what gets you to mobilize, I commend you. Because Palestine is what got me to mobilize for general strikes. It was because of my sister Bisan, who called for them. And I thank her. Thank you!
We as a human species need to recognize that what’s happening in Palestine will happen again if we do not have a coalesced list of needs and demands. We need to understand the need to shape policy. We strike for sovereignty under the hands of the masses. Sovereignty under the hands of the masses!
I learn so much from studying the successes and failures of the Burkina Faso revolution, lasting for four glorious years. Here’s what’s previously happened across colonized countries that managed to have revolutions, like clockwork.
Step three (mobilization) was executed by a critical mass of people (not everyone, not even the majority, but enough people fasted, trained, studied, fought, enough people taught their neighbor/girlfriend/cousin/librarian/grocery store clerk the same thing, of the ways we can engage with struggle rather than the ways we run from it, or assume it’s the job of someone else. There was enough mobilization sustained by extrapolation (the understanding that this was bigger than them) such that a popular uprising occurred, when which is a hard thing not to lose (as in, to let dissipate). A popular uprising is a difficult thing to lose! The strength in numbers is very, very real. Look at the farmer’s strike in India! How could they fail?
Then, this new and fragile union with a new world, this baby that needs attention, protecting, a family of support around it— gets hijacked. Colonial or neocolonial regimes take root and begin killing as many people as they can in attempts to spread epigenetic fear into the populace such that they never, ever try and imagine a world without their power ever again. This is what’s currently happening in Sudan right now. This is what is happening in Palestine. This is what’s happening everywhere where there are colonized people fighting against oppressive regimes.
If we can manage to act together, if we can manage world-wide mobilization and world-wide solidarity, we can stand for one another at this crucial stage— we must dream past the start of something and be thinking towards the day when we are inevitably successful— how will we keep those gains?
Past the fall of the empire— what are we fighting for? How do we intend to keep it?
Peace to you and yours, Bisan. The sun has set in Sierra Leone. There is not a day that goes by where I do not think about you. And I thank for being plugged in, being supportive of, being for the revolutions across the world— especially your own. Thank you for being someone who belongs to your country in ways that are bold and ways that endanger you. I am so proud of you. I can’t thank you enough.
And peace to everyone reading, here meaning: I hope the work you engage with today emboldens you to act tomorrow.
ismatu g.
PS. THIS IS STILL A STRIKE THAT LIVES LARGELY ON SOCIAL MEDIA! WE NEED THAT TO CHANGE. TALK! TO! YOUR! NEIGHBORS! YOUR PARENTS! PEOPLE YOU KNOW IN PHYSICAL, DAILY LIFE! I DID NOT LEARN ABOUT THIS UNTIL PEOPLE IN MY PHYSICAL LIFE TOLD ME! USE THIS TEXT AND TALK ABOUT IT thank you have a good day.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
an essay nearly entitled, “the orange trees teach me art-making.” This essay is a continuation of my prolonged look at revolutionary healers in practice to become one— where healing also includes artistry. What is my role as an freedom-minded artist, this side of revolution? Check the link to donate to the universal basic income program for Ebola Survivors in Kenema, Sierra Leone below!
https://msha.ke/ismatu
Theses:
A (art-making) = B(world-making) = C (truth-telling)
(1) One of the greatest powers held in the human sovereign world is the power to create and destroy: to make, shape and reshape the world and what we know to be true. I call this world-making.
(2) We are currently at war and (I would argue) in the exposition of a new world.
(3) This world is still actively being made. What constitutes power in the hands of the masses? What methods of world-making are truly available to us?
All sources available at ismatu.substack.com.
Jazz of the Episode (sampling):
Melancholia x Wynton Marsalis
For All We Know x Ahmad Jamal
Why, Buzzardman, Why? X Alabaster DePlume
Tezeta x Mulatu Astatke
My Odoh - African Lofi x Lofi Afrobeats
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.
Author: La Marr Jurelle Bruce
Hyperlinked above is their academia.edu page, which has a lovely biography and two more brilliant articles available to read. Remember that orienting oneself with the author (who wrote it? for what reason?) aids in understanding their arguments. There is no one viewpoint of objectivity.
Presented in audio is a reading of pages 1-11 of How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind. The full chapter has been made available by Duke University Press right here, so you can listen and read along! I highlyrecommend this method of learning for maximum absorption.
Dr. Bruce also gave this illuminating talk with Farah Jasmine Griffin at the Barnard Center of Research on Women. Author talks are also phenomenal resources for digesting academic prose (or in this case, prose poetry).
Remember the questions we ask when we consider a set of claims critically:
(1) who wrote it?
(2) for what reason?
(3) for what audience?
(4) what’s missing?
Additionally, while not provided here, this book has one of the most stunning acknowledgement sections I have ever read. And I do own this book in physical copy. Just saying. We’ve been chatting in the discord, which I am apparently bad at hyperlinking but I will ask someone to share the right link in the comments :)
post script: i did not have to ask, someone did post a link in the discord! thank you!
happy reading <3
ig
This reading is only available for a limited time, as per the wishes of Dr. Bruce!! Don’t hesitate don’t procrastinate!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.
Author: La Marr Jurelle Bruce
Hyperlinked above is their academia.edu page, which has a lovely biography and two more brilliant articles available to read. Remember that orienting oneself with the author (who wrote it? for what reason?) aids in understanding their arguments. There is no one viewpoint of objectivity.
Presented in audio is a reading of pages 1-11 of How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind. The full chapter has been made available by Duke University Press right here, so you can listen and read along! I highly recommend this method of learning for maximum absorption.
Dr. Bruce also gave this illuminating talk with Farah Jasmine Griffin at the Barnard Center of Research on Women. Author talks are also phenomenal resources for digesting academic prose (or in this case, prose poetry).
Remember the questions we ask when we consider a set of claims critically:
(1) who wrote it?
(2) for what reason?
(3) for what audience?
(4) what’s missing?
Additionally, while not provided here, this book has one of the most We’ve been chatting in the discord, which I am apparently bad at hyperlinking but I will ask someone to share the right link in the comments :)
happy reading <3
ig
This reading is only available for a limited time, as per the wishes of Dr. Bruce!! Don’t hesitate don’t procrastinate!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
captioned live! we took one hour to read four paragraphs together. excerpt from: Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara, edited by Thabiti Lewis. I don’t usually save my lives because (1) that requires editing and I am already drowning in administrative work and (2) I enjoy existing in temporal space for only a moment in time, rather than being replayable and rewatchable and forwardable all the time. it’s a weird thing to watch happen to your personhood. but this one i found to be really lovely and helpful, so here it is. i hope you enjoyyy.
correct video transcript available at ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
In which we engage the following theses:
(1) the ruling class benefits from illiteracy.
(2) short-form video entertains more than it sticks.
(3) reading is a discipline distinct from listening, watching, or other forms of literacy. It’s a skill that needs to be honed separately.
(4) Absolutely no one comes to save us but us.
Full and accurate transcript available at ismatu.substack.com. Thank you for listening <3
Jazz of the Episode:
The Jordan River Song x Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
Lena’s Song x The Sweet Enoughs
Sunset and the Mocking Bird x Duke Ellington
Abusey Junction x Kokoroko
Udo x The Cavemen.
Muziqa heywete x Getatchew Mekurya
Mogoya x Oumou Sangaré
Drume Negrita x Andy Bey
Tony x Larry Morezo, Dennis Tini
Melancholia x Wynton Marsalis
Spring Yaounde x Wynton Marsalis
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
internet friends, I am still burning alive.
Today is February 10, 2024, which marks two years since my entrance into the social internet. This has been a terrifying, incredible, world-changing transition— maybe not (yet) for the world, but most certainly for my world. I did not have any social media previous to virality on my first TikTok video. Honestly? I viewed these spaces as nothing more than cannon fodder for the degradation of the mind and of any true, real, lasting community. I wanted no part. I made a video because I wanted to tell a silly story on this silly new app, and because I had 17 followers (all of which I knew in real life), and because I was still busy swallowing the griefs of this world. I wanted to do something that felt… silly. And inconsequential.
I am chuckling to myself, in hindsight.
To be clear: I was right to be fearful of these spaces. Do you know how long it’s taken me to fully realize that every view, every point on a metric, is a living, moving someone interacting with my personhood? My face and voice are public record. I am watching myself become infused with authority I did not ask for and did little to earn. The visibility alone… not everyone that sees me feels kindly.
I was right to be wary and skeptical and terrified. And these apps do allow us to cosplay learning and mimic connectivity when we are deeply lonely in real life. These apps are actively drugging our minds.
And.
You all have fundamentally restructured what I conceive of as reality. Online is most definitely real life! And we— this community, what I call my Constituency— have accomplished amazing things and truly, if you knew what I am working to prepare us for off-screen. We are just starting. We are just starting.
Recently, I made public my feelings of burnout and exhaustion with the amount of people that are contented with short-form video. I have come to detest the medium; video— especially video that is under fifteen minutes— is very good at convincing the viewer they are doing something active. The amount of people that watch me and feel like they have learned something, when in reality they are watching me learn— it astounds me. I wonder if I am taking part in placating us as a community rather than galvanizing us towards action that’s truly necessary.
There were so many comments under that video— too many to read, but one I caught over and over again: never stop writing.
Listen: that was never on the table. I said I might stop making videos— I was always going to write. I have absolutely been battling hopelessness, despair, dissolution and defeatism about how difficult it is to accomplish basic shit— to get folks to make the transition from passive watcher to active learner. I spent two weeks taking time with my teachers: my loved ones, here and gone. They reminded me how powerful it is to be able to hide in plain sight. I am using my fertile mind to bloom this community— you who read, who write, who change their real lives. This was always the plan. I refuse to waste our time. I want this community to live long past my last video, to have ripple effects that I will never know about and never see. I got like, four more years in this iteration of online space, give or take a year. We have a very finite amount of time to mobilize around ideas that are for our good, the good of the masses, the good of the people, the world-keepers of tomorrow. The world-makers of today. Nothing about this is idealistic. I am not being poetic or metaphorical. The work is urgent and calls every one of us.
Excerpt from a poem: The Lesson by Afeni Shakur
Thesis: Revolutionary is not some lofty, miraculous, singular idea nor title. Revolution is not a singular event. It is a beginning. It’s a marriage. And We (the People) have a world to retake and rebuild! There is no sweeter call. We owe it to one another to commit ourselves to the rest of our shared lives. The freedom song drives me wild— I do not earn the song, I only respond to the call— I AM A REVOLUTIONARY! I AM A REVOLUTIONARY!
So I ask you, those of us that know me in these spaces, that give me the space and kind consideration to be a teacher and a healer and a mobilizing agent: our task is to be mobilized enough to outlive me easily. How can we ensure that? What are our communal values? How do we wish to continue? What do we need and want from me, the person at the front of the room? How do we practice reciprocity? How do we ensure that the Constituency outlives me? What have I not thought of yet?
I’ll tell you what I want: to be forgotten. I want to be deeply insignifcant and unremarkable. I have accepted this momentary role as catalyst, as a teacher, as a launching point. A space of radical contagion— that is fine. It feels above me. I AM A REVOLUTIONARY. And: I want you, each of us, all of us to become so wrapped up in the condition of our children(’s children’s children’s children) that we forget about I and me, such that we dissolve into a love that erodes boundaries. Like Sonnet XVII— so close that your hand on my chest is my hand. So close that your freedom dreams bloom in my sleep.
Among my greatest wish is to be unremarkable; a face among many; one stone in the mountain, that we do not see as a collection of little pebbles but as a mountain full in herself, whole on her own and majestic in range, a return to sovereign earth. The beautiful exchange: we climb and catch the song of liberation and fall and rise again. Dissolve into the soil! I AM A REVOLUTIONARY! I AM A REVOLUTIONARY!
DISCORD LINK: https://discord.gg/9d4SVjXY
four more years, friends. my mind expands all the time.
thank you for the motivation to consider freedom. what a life.
i hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease. i hope that work brings us closer to the sweet plum of freedom on the other side. and i’ll see you all there— or simpler said: peace.
ig
Post script: I provided the discord link so that we could discuss the above questions. How do we want to exist? Where do we want to exist? I want these spaces to be Black and Indigenous led specifically. I want these spaces to be one of prolonged learning, of trying and failing, of asking questions of frsutration of joy of hope, of space foro the full iteration of human emotion and of spaces that allow us to be vulnerable enogh to change. at least to start.
we’re blooming something. I don’t want to shy away. You don’t have to earn the call of revolutionary, you have to answer it. I AM A REVOLUTIONARY. I AM A REVOLUTIONARY.
Jazz of the episode:
Drume Negrita (Afro-Cuban Lullaby) x Andy Bey
Lena’s Song x The Sweet Enoughs
Abusey Junction x Kokoroko
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Threadings. and quite literally everything I do is free! I only can do this because people voluntarily pay! Wow! Thank you!!!!
Transcription below because someone asked for the still words.
Long time no see. Hi there. If you're new here, which if you're here, I doubt you're new. I mean, but just in case. My name is Ismatu. E-S-M-A-TU. I like E, S like S, not like Z. Not Ismatu, not Ismatu, Ease, like Easter egg. Ease-matu. One day.
I will be an Ismaltu that other people can say, oh yeah, like Ismaltu, like Ismaltu Gwendolyn. It's gonna be a great day, hi. I have pistachio tea on screen, a stack of notebooks, a increasingly worn copy of How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind, and a need to situate myself such that I'm not making so much noise with the mic. Hold on, hold on.
Okay, starting now. I should have put my glasses. Hi there. Grab your tea, I'm having pistachio as per usual. It also has roasted almonds in it because I'm on the go right now. I didn't bring all my florals. I do so love a nutty floral. Long time no see. I generally don't like being on video because my face and voice are now public record in a way that alarms me. But we can't go backwards. Hi, it's good to see you.
I'm out here making housing and security look very cute. It looks like a cute place, right? You're sitting in the window sill right now. It's a lovely winter's day in Brooklyn. I would otherwise be really excited to be here if I were not here for the passing of a loved one. Which thank you for your condolences, by the way. I'm receiving a lot of kind messages. None of this feels particularly real. And if the past is any indication.
This is just gonna be something that I remembered. I'm gonna be going about my day going, God, I really wanna talk to Baba about, oh right. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to tell Baba, oh right. Let me text Baba and tell him I was thinking.
like that.
I'm making this video not to cry on camera. So you all know how much I love that.
but to talk to you all about some changes that I am making existing online. Which is, I really have been, I don't want to say slacking, but sincerely deep prioritizing being here with the patrons and the substachians, the substichites, the substichanders.
Stubstiganders is actually very cute and I'm keeping it. The Patreons, the Stubstiganders, mostly because I am not compelled by money. So the idea of making extra content to reward people for giving me money was always just such a low burner, especially with the other things that's on my plate. You know, familial duties, personal duties, the reading and writing for short form and long term projects, organizing on the continent and also in the United States for some, I just like-
for some care infrastructure that I've been feeling is necessary. More on that later as per usual. So that means that like making extra content for people that pay to support me was always kind of like a, when I get the extra energy, when I get the extra time, when I get the extra focus, I will give you my extra, you know, you're paying for extras. And I find that uncompelling for a couple of reasons. The first being that
because I am not compelled by money, it never really becomes a priority. You know what I'm saying? If the idea is, oh, I make extra things so that people who wish to support me continue to have incentive to support me, I actually don't care about being broke. As you can see, again, chronic housing insecurity. I'm more housed than I have been since I lived in Chicago, and it's still quite precarious. It is tough to not have a permanent address in the United States, it makes everything difficult. And I shouldn't be surprised at how long it's taking me to come back into like fully fledged housing, but it's again, really tough. Like I still don't make enough to qualify for renting. So I mean, I should be motivated. I should be motivated. And I just am not. And then secondly, it undermines what I want to do with this space.
So people that pay to support me, especially at this point in time, because I give you so little, I have to imagine that you're here because you want me to be well. Because even if I don't care about being poor and destitute, you all are like, that's not a reality that we want you waiting in. Because in honesty, you're right. I shouldn't be skating towards financial disaster and catastrophe all the time. I agree. There should be many layers of safety between me and death by preventable disease.
death by hypothermia, death by substance abuse, because truly the only way that you can survive chronic housing insecurity and or homelessness is drugs. It's drugs, it's the only thing that makes it tolerable, et cetera. So you're right. I keep coming back to this email that I got a while ago, sometime in like, I think like October or some shit. And they said,
you can't die. If you die, you don't understand there's nobody that does what you do. There's nobody to replace you in your online spaces and in your real life spaces. You actually cannot move like this. You have to consider yourself more precious. It's essentially the text of the email. I haven't stopped thinking about that. I'm trying to reconcile that with, yes, but I'm not motivated by money. So why?
Yeah, I just, I think what's happening for me is that I don't want you all to be motivated by production from me. Cause what kind of has happened less and less so, but like, especially at the beginning of things, you know, I would set up paid spaces and I would promise perks. And my ability to fulfill those perks, which I'm still behind on fulfilling, I still work on it, especially cause the perks that I have in mind and the perks that I promise.
are labor intensive and time intensive. They take like a lot of time and care, so I can't do them very fast. And so many people wrote me letters and I just, I refuse to half-ass that. So if I write three letters a week, that means, and I got 300 letters, it takes a long time to get back to people. But I still am. What happens is the emphasis is on my production. You did it to get something extra for me so that if that thing comes slowly or not at all, then subscription drops.
And then it makes it something that I can't actually depend on consistently and like I already said I'm already not motivated by money in the first place. So I just You understand what I'm trying to say I hope so what I want is to take Support from of me and my work away from the idea of production So I have decided that we're starting over with the patreon and with the sub stack. I was sharing
the things that I was sharing, A, to practice, just to get my feet wet with what it feels like to create things consistently, to create audio, to create visuals, to do all these things. And all I really had was the models of content creators and influencers that came before me. Now, I don't fuck with either of those two terms. My primary job on the internet, I do not think is content creation. My primary job on the internet is not influencer. I don't...
I'm not really here to change the minds and hearts of the populace. I'm here existing in public because it keeps me accountable to the public. And I'm here sharing what I learned, which is not feel like content. Like we don't call authors content creators. We don't call music production content creators. So I'm not a content creator because I'm an essayist or because I'm existing online content. The idea of entertainment.
is so superfluous to what I am actually doing here. I am a public teacher. This is actually what I wanted when I was graduating from grad school and thinking about the job market and looking at jobs that just like bored me. There was exactly two jobs that I was really excited about. And I got really far like in the processes for being considered before they, you know, went to people that have more experience than me because I was just graduating. Job market's tough.
One was in curriculum development for English and teaching that curriculum to like high school level students and one was in a policy think tank for public health that was localized to a specific urban region. And remarkably both of those things are things that I do now with my day today. So I'm not a content creator, I'm a public educator.
That's what I'm doing here. I have a syllabus that lives, that is directly affected by the questions that you all ask me and the ways that you engage with me. And I have projects and capstone projects that you all are and will be, continue to be involved in, that have to do with public health and safety. And obviously there comes a lot of education within that as well, because that is my field of study. I have two degrees in public health now, global health, and one degree in English.
So I'm doing what I want to be doing. None of that is about the creation of like things that are designed to entertain. None of that is about content. I just, the fact that I am existing in video and audio format is just the medium, the vehicle in which I can come to you with the things that I hope and dream for myself and for us as a collective. What I'm finding is that short form video land, so TikTok and Instagram, and even long form video land with YouTube, which...
I keep promising a return. It's gonna happen. It's just that I can't come back to YouTube without finishing up the Malcolm X series. One, the person that I wanted to talk to about that is Babaseku. So give me a second. And then two.
Yeah, give me a second. All forms of video and just existing online in a way that the public can interact with me.
suck like respectfully like uh any kind of video i think because it's so ubiquitous to society at this point in time because we view these people that are making art as content creators instead of artists opens you a lot like opens you to the wide heights and depths of the internet it opens you to being recirculated in ways that you do or do not consent to um and it makes it so
question, comment, recommendation that is helpful to my thinking and to my praxis. Every actual thing that I find helpful has a couple on this side and a couple on this side. And this side is like the angelification of me, the me becoming like a deity or a legend or someone that is above critique, where I can do no wrong and that is dehumanizing. And then the other side in which I am.
the devil incarnate, an agent of chaos, someone who is actively out to sabotage the collectives of liberation that I am a part of via identity. And that is also dehumanizing. I don't enjoy either of those things. And they, if I read too much of that, it warps my sense of personhood. That sort of consumption of what people feel about themselves projected onto me is...
not really something I wish to engage in, which means that I can't really read the comments on TikTok and Instagram anymore. I don't read YouTube comments. I don't check my notifications. I don't see, like I can't actually interact with people in the ways that I would like to. So I think what I'm going to be using these spaces for is to talk about the things that I am learning in real time. Because usually by the time that I've like made a video about something and it's circulating on these short form. Um.
places because I know that my reach is wide and far. I'm well read. I am well situated. I feel comfortable enough to say, to make a claim, to state a thesis statement. I'm still comfortable to be wrong. I can be wrong about anything, but I'm definitely not. If I'm ever talking about a text in public, I've read it at least twice, usually three times. So
I want spaces where I can learn in real time and have first draft thoughts because first draft thoughts are not safe for the general internet. And I think that's what I'm going to use those spaces for. These spaces for. The Patreon, the Substaganders, that's what I would like to be doing here. And I think these are also spaces that are niched down enough, not quite small, not quite large, but just like the people that engage with me on Patreon, the people that engage with me on Substack are here because they like...
what I have to bring to the table and they want to discuss with me. I think that you all work to see me as someone who is just like a finite person and not someone that solely exists in their video screen or someone who has much stock in the idea of being legendary. I'm just a person.
The conundrum that I've been having is, well, that's educational work. Like I'm just, I'm talking about my thoughts, I'm learning in public by proxy. People also learn as I do that. So how do I charge for that if my work is free? Like if everything educational, if my best work is the work that I think that people can learn from is free and is free on purpose, why wouldn't I just give that away for free? And that's been at loggerheads because it's like, these paid spaces are supposed to be paid and they're supposed to incentivize people to support me and da da. That's why you make extra stuff.
but the whole extra thing doesn't compel me to do it because then I'm motivated by money and I'm not motivated by money. And if the thing that I actually want to be doing in these spaces is essentially like long form book clubs, listen, this is an amazing text. Hey, remember when I said she cute and she thick? This is dense and good. It is prose, it's prose poetry, prose, prose poetry. Okay, it's so like, you can see how haggard this is becoming. Ben's terps, okay.
A Ripper 2, Doodles and the Margins. Okay, I love this book. I keep returning to it. I keep rereading it. And I don't have time to talk about the rest of the text. Most people, especially with academic books like these, they only read the first chapter because it's a prolonged thesis. And that's good. If you only read the first chapter, lovely. And also I wanna read the whole book. I don't have time to do that on my big social media. I have a syllabus to get through that I'm already, I don't wanna say behind on.
But we have work to do, you know what I'm saying? I have projects, I'm working with multiple kinds of people on the things that we're gonna be talking about. So I wanna take these spaces to talk about what I'm reading. I also have Thomas Sankara in the corner over there. I started talking about that in live on TikTok. I want a space to be able to repost my lives without fear of them getting redistributed in big ways. You know what I'm saying? And all of that's very educational work. It's work that I enjoy. It feels like an office hours situation.
and you don't pay to go to office hours.
So I'm starting over with the Patreon and with the sub stack. Everything that I think should, I've gone through it again and I've made free what I think should stay up and things that I made with a specific audience in mind. Like also one of the reasons I was posting specifically to paid tiers is because it denotes at least some sense of adulthood. If you have your own money to be able to spend to give me a couple dollars a month, you are likely in...
in have enough agency over your life to have your own bank account and your own finances. So I was kind of using that as a metric for like making sure that like kid kids aren't here because there are some kids that follow me and like to engage with my work. And I was not about to be, some things are for adults. But I just like, I don't really wanna have conversations without kiddos. I like the kids, I like the teeny boppers. I like that like 12, 13, 14 year olds are here. I think your ideas are incredible.
and I wanna hear what you have to say. And I don't wanna exclude you from the learning because you can't afford to pay for it. What is it? When I was 12, $5 was a million dollars. When I was 12, $5 was like a cupcake, a very big cupcake from the bakery that I could walk to. And that is about a million dollars as 12, as a 12 year old. So, I'm just gonna do all of this for free. I hope that you weren't here specifically because you felt like you had special East Montsue content because I'm not.
Any more special in the space I am in big spaces? I don't really want the incentive on your side to be exchange for extra. I want the incentive to be because you care about me. And I'm here. I want my incentive for being here to be because I care about you.
So it's all just gonna be free.
We're starting over. And this frees me up a lot to just exist without having to make a product or something compelling or fancy or what have you. And I can just breathe. And you'll know that when I'm here, it's because I wanna be here and not because I feel like I have to.
Yeah. All right, well.
What time is it? That's about all. In terms of loose life updates, I'll talk about those ones when I feel like talking about my.
Nothing is easy. There's a lot of ease, but it's not easy, if that makes sense. Even amidst tumultuous circumstances and difficulties.
This is the most blessed I've ever been. You know what I mean? Blessed in the original etymology of the world is someone played in blood for the amount of freedom that I get to have every day. And it's my job to continue the work of making sure that everybody that interacts with me and comes after me, however much after actually exists because colonialism really fucked up time.
I want freedom to be contagious. Just like hope.
Thank you for watching. I wanna do more of this.
And I'm excited to be back in spaces, Patreon, subscandies, where you all can talk to me and I can see you and I don't have to worry about being assaulted with the ways I am more or less than little h human. It's very nice to just exist without complexities or pride.
The internet continues to grow bigger and bigger and bigger. And I stay the same size. And everything growing means that I have me that goes outside of me. And that's difficult for my brain to reconcile. And I have never been so well suited to make my dreams reality. So I can't go backwards.
It's just gonna help for me to have as much little space as I can possibly hold onto because there's gonna come a day where I'm not on the internet anymore, where I don't do this, where I can't talk directly to you like this. So I'm gonna enjoy it while it's here.
I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with these, okay? Have a great day.
or whatever time of day you're listening to this. If it's three in the morning, have a good three in the morning. Goodbye.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
a letter to my daughter on the religion of revolution.
Please lend your support to A Little Juju Podcast in their return! Juju Grant is a writer, ethnographer, show host and spiritual tower actively practicing wisdom anarchy. She so brilliantly archives African and Black Diasporatic Spiritual Traditions for free, and for the good of the people.
donate here! or via Cashapp, Venmo, or PayPal. All are available in herlink tree.
I do not take sponsorships so that I can shine lights on my kinfolk, who need support in the community work they do just like I do. I am so grateful for your support! You all enable me to buy groceries on a regular basis! I want to spread this love. I would love northing more than to see this fundraiser with more than what she needs.
Jazz of the Episode:
The Jordan River Song x Emahoy Tsege Marian Gebru
Whisky Story Time x Alabaster DePlume
Spring Yaounde x Wynton Marsalis
Lena’s Song x The Sweet Enoughs
You Go To My Head x Frank Sinatra
Tenkou Why Feel Sorry x Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
Easy Living x Clifford Brown
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
An essay from The Vault on how miraculously pain steals language. CW: mentions of self-harm.
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The first essay of the Revolutionary Healers series. WHAT USE is "measured rationality" when to be Reasonable means to dying quietly, all the time? Notes from the text, “How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind.” Full transcript, with sources, at ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
in which ismatu delivers a free-styled, spoken essay where they realize Grief as a seed blooming their bones.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
The primary goal of this essay is to argue for a healthy skepticism of sponsorship-saturated media amidst a new age in information sharing, with secondary goals as following:
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to commit myself to The People and my people publicly by way of refusing to sell my word online, and
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to name explicitly the ways refusing traditional sponsorship places me in a decent amount of precarity.
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I’ma spoil the ending for you: I don’t want to run from precarity. Being unsteady forces me to lean on the communities that I say I value. I continually argue that refusing sponsorships as my primary mode of income forces me to expand. Now, I must trust the people for care instead of trusting them as a willing and endless site of extraction.
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Plus… willing? How much can you consent to extraction anyways? Bah. I get ahead of myself.
I wish to belong to The People and that means my word needs to be mine. Thank you for listening <3
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Since y’all stay asking me for resource lists. The here, damn! of it all.
Full list and links associated at ismatu.substack.com. happy reading!!
jazz of the episode:
Tony x Larry Nozero, Dennis Tini
Souvenir d’Italie x Lelio Luttazzi
He Knows She’s Good For You x Cyril Chambers
Two For The Road x Eddie Daniels, Bucky Pizzarelli
I Cover the Waterfront x Joe Pass
Zen x Philippe Sarde, Toots Thielemans
Message x Robohands
City in the Sky x Elijah Fox
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
In which Ismatu Gwendolyn, new to the healing profession and rooting in revolutionary thought and action, provides structure for their studies in public.
As my Auntie Dequi says, “Struggle is protracted.”
What we are not about to do is sit up here and study five things for five seconds. And I’m guilty of this! I constantly fight the desire to be fresh and topical and marketable. I want to be widely received and widely appreciated. Of course I do. In the past, I have moved quickly though trending topics to provide bite-sized analysis good for a short video. That’s not nearly enough time to learn and learn well.
[Editor’s Note]: I will also be fr in saying, did I realize y’all were paying attention? Did I care about social media? I thought TikTok was a kids dancing app. I didn’t realize what I have the opportunity to do.
I have to be what I wish to see in this world. In studying in public, I both create a new standard for myself in terms of engagement with online community, create the means for online communities to study together, and create new lenses of possibility for anyone else with desires to learn, teach, and heal in ways that don’t require us to be extractive.
Revolutionary Healers: Studies in Sovereignty (ft. The Magic Expanding Syllabus)
Discord: https://discord.gg/SHXhzAKr
Objectives of Revolutionary Healers (Study): October 2023 through February(ish) 2024
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aids in establishing myself as a perpetual student/teacher: I am not an or the expert. I am not the authority. I have no desire to tell you what is a true, certain, fact and what is a bad, false, take. I want to study in public and show my work, in research, thought, and analysis. I want to read slowly enough for people to read alongside me and ask questions. I learn by way of learning in real public and in real time. I learn by answering questions and grappling with you all, whether I am “right” or “wrong.” I am unconcerned with universal truth, I am concerned with understanding the following: (1) what is possible? (2) what I conceive of as impossible? and (2a) who told me that I, or we, could not do that? Why?
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highlights my court and company: I want to study my teachers in public as a means of providing source material. I recognize this as one of the most valuable parts of my collegiate experience, where people that I had kinship with took their access to infrastructure (professors navigating an academic institution) and guided me along the study of their teachers.
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in studying in public, I also give us the means to talk about what we learn in community. I have created a discord for anyone that would like to talk about what I study in public. I will not be in this discord. I am not learning another social apparatus. I am creating this to fill a continually requested social need.
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sets up us well for continuing studies: what we learn today builds on what we learn tomorrow and yesterday. On my platforms, we have been studying mutual aid (via Mutual Aid by Dean Spade) and care infrastructure (via The Care Manifesto by The Care Collective). We now study these ideals in action, with present and previous day examples of revolutionary caretaking. We take these lessons into account within our daily lives so that our studies sharpen and hone our actions, which become restorative and expansive enough to create the need for more study. This, in effect, is the protracted process of world-making.
Preliminary Questions for Critical Analysis
(1) Who wrote it?
(2) For what audience?
(3) For what purpose?
(4) What’s missing?
I ask that you consider me critically.
My name is Ismatu Gwendolyn and I am committed to learning and feeling through the sticky nature of human connection— the study of love, or the lack thereof. In this world, love means liberation. I have scholastic dedication to African-American studies, global health, clinical social work and poetry, and I have academic histories and roots at Northwestern University and The University of Chicago in the United States of America (in and around Chicago, IL). I am a Sierra Leonean Black US-American personally and generationally from the mountains. I am an information anarchist and I act on that politic by learning, growing, and sharing what I learn, both on my TikTok and Instagram where I do personal + political education, and most especially here with you all, in the essays. All of this, along with my work as a mental health professional, is and will remain free of charge. As of writing this, I am 25 years old.
I write for the public, for anyone that considers themselves to be of the People and for the People that grieve the current state of the world, and what it does to us. I study and document my process so that we, as a whole, can act on our grief, re-understand what is possible, and find spaces of sovereignty which might give way to peace.
I conduct this series of analysis for the following reasons:
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to entice us into long-form, protracted study capable of fitting into long-form, protracted struggle
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to commit myself to working for my communities rather than extracting from them
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to recruit aid in providing my healing work for free, which places me in precarity
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this includes: monetary aid (one-time or recurring so I can pay for the expense of living), time and attention invested in study, discussion with people you are in community with (in physical person or online), action in one’s life (in physical person or online)
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to prepare myself well for the life I have signed up for, as a healer engaging in revolutionary sovereignty as consistent praxis
It is your job to consider what is missing from my analysis and what I choose to not share. This is how you imagine me complexly, as a human being on a stage rather than as a two-dimensional figure of entertainment that lives behind your screen.
I will update this syllabus as our study roots and blooms with the appropriate links, sources, and resources.
Our first essay to consider is Chapter One: MAD IS A PLACE, from How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind, brilliantly written by La Marr Jurelle Bruce.There is a forthcoming essay to ground our analysis within the mad work of revolution. As I write my analysis, I place them here.
Make sure to join the discord for aid accessing the text.
I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.
Stiff resistance,
IG
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sharing an old piece of creative writing because I, a mountain dweller, am stuck in the city and think of the sea.
Originally written June of 2018
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In which we: unpack the “is she mad?” mentality, contemplate informed consent for a podcast space, and be explicit about the care infrastructure and needs of Ismatu Gwendolyn. Thanks for listening <3
Read the full transcription, annotated, at ismatu.substack.com.
Jazz of the Episode:
My One and Only Love x John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman
Say It (Over and Over Again) x John Coltrane Quartet
Manhattan x Blossom Dearie
I’ll Never Smile Again x Sarah Vaughan
Footsteps In The Dark x The Isley Brothers
It Never Entered My Mind x Miles Davis Quintet
Dark End of the Street x Aretha Franklin
Spring Yaounde x Wynton Marsalis
Maybe Tomorrow x Grant Green
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notes on refusing to charge for client services.
Cited: In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love by Joy James | Oshun’s Flight
Cliff notes: stop asking me to settle for manna when the opportunity for community arises.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit ismatu.substack.com
Oh, then in regards to mutual aid, I keep faltering with this series because I can't, like I think I need to find a balance between what I wanna talk about and what I feel like the public needs because I keep curriculum planning and then realizing we are way behind as a public where I thought we were when it comes to understanding the importance of mutual aid and what it does.
I really wanted to jump into the how-to, which is the mutual aid by Dean Spade is just a book of how-to. And then I realized we were missing a lot of the why. We are doing all of this work and being in community with one another because we are designed to be compelled by community, not because we are trying to win a battle. Yeah, like the winning the battle stuff is important. That's cute and that's...
It's not insignificant.
It's just that if our goal is to win, my question is win what? Win against tyranny, win against oppression, win against all these things. Do we see how that still centers the oppressor in the first place? We're not actually thinking about like, what is it that you want to win? Past beating them. You want, you know, OK, I understand we want the satisfaction of victory. What is victory? What does it actually look like to win?
What does the world look like? What do people's day to day look like? What does it look like for the most vulnerable in our societies when we win? Because then we have to start thinking about building. That's a, it harkens a bit to what I said earlier about when I ask my groups, okay, so like what does community look like? What do you want community to look like? And I get a lot of, “well, I don't want this. I don't want to feel this. I don't want that.”
You haven't actually told me what it is that you wanna build. You've told me what it is that you wanna avoid. And that is, it can be helpful, but you don't lay a foundation with negative space. We lay a foundation packed solid on what it is that we do want.
No stripping did not ruin my relationship with men but you should hear how many hours in a row I can work nonstop hahahahah <3 on treating myself as a body that breathes and moves slowly. Much love.
Jazz of the Episode [incomplete list]:
Hour of Parting x Sun Ra
Send In The Clowns x Pat Martino
Lena’s Song x The Sweet Enoughs
Cicada Season x Fuubutsushi
Why, Buzzardman, Why? X Alabaster Plume
Spring Yaounde x Wynton Marsalis
The Jordan River Song x Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
Turpentine x Alabaster Plume
Tenkou Why Feel Sorry x Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
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Therapists are part of the Soft Police (signed, an MSW). Read the full essay at Ismatu.Substack.com. Thank you for listening with an open mind!
Sources:
No Soft Police! Event Recording organized by Interrupting Criminalization
"No Soft Police,” a chapter in No More Police! written by Andrea Ritchie and Mariame Kaba (please email me if you would like assistance accessing the text or if you would like to buy the book for someone else!)
Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant, journalist and former sex worker
Brown, Victoria Bissell. "Sex and the city: Jane Addams confronts prostitution." (2010).
Mendes, P. (2020). Tracing the origins of critical social work practice. In Critical social work (pp. 17-29). Routledge.
History of Social Work in the United States
Links to sources available in transcript.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
I feel like i am in a zoo.
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Musings from my porch in Chicago that ask: am I good at hosting happiness? Am I the right shape to hold onto the life that I want? What noise do I make when I get knocked around?
read this episode at ismatu.substack.com.
Jazz of the episode:
Why, Buzzardman, Why? x Alabaster Plume
The Jordan River Song x Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
Lena’s Song x The Sweet Enoughs
You Go To My Head x Billie Holiday
Exit x Sebastian Mikael
Still thinking of Jordan Neely.
ismatu gwendolyn
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
on what we owe to each other in the grief.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
a conversation about survival, archival, and the intimacy found and lost when you grow up in the public eye. request the full transcript at ismatu.gwendolyn@gmail.com
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this is the next essay in the study of self series. listen to the previous episode here. Content warning for: mentions of suicidal thought and intent, allusions towards self-harm. Nothing graphic, but it is a recurrent theme of the piece.
The first time I got recognized from TikTok, I was at a porn convention.
[insert the really cute but compromising picture of me at said porn convention here. I most definitely cannot post this photo so just imagine xoxo <3]
I need you to be right here with me in this moment. You are at a work event, crop topped and busty, see-through bedazzled mini skirt stretched over a bright pink thong, standing sure on seven-inch chrome Pleasers and an iconic bright pink mini afro (to match the thong, obviously). And you are freezing. Like, yes, it is cold in the convention center when you’re wearing this little clothing, but I mean deer in the headlights, this cannot be be happening freezing while knocking back your third (work-sanctioned) shot of the evening. Maaaaaaybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re just intoxicated! Maybe you totally did not just hear someone gasp and say “Oh my gosh, are you on TikTok?” to the back of your head. To you, the stripper.
I’m not being a very helpful narrator— you and I both know that’s all just wishful thinking. LMAO you definitely did just hear that this shit is wild.
Now what? You’ve been on TikTok for like… a month. No one prepared you for this eventuality so soon. Being recognized is for famous people!! What the fuck!!!! Do you think of a lie? You cannot just stand there omg think! Think of a lie!! You’re draining the shot awkwardly and now you’re… swishing that casamigos around on your tongue? oh my word now you’re grimacing. Do something.
Okay. You’re breathing out. That’s good!! You’re swallowing the shot. Great momentum. You are turning around on some newly found liquid courage and move to open your brilliant mouth and then this voice in the back of your head comes forward, all bright and toothy: Everyone can see you. Already. How did you manage to imagine this social media thing would never really affect your life? You can officially never go backwards.
Hi. My name is Ismatu. I have for you an essay that used to be called, “on being surprised I bloomed sunflowers.” It comes to you in three acts, with the following thesis:
One of the best ways, the kindest ways, the most lasting ways I can love myself is through archival. It’s through constant self-perseveration— not only “self-preservation” as in survival, but in my record of life. And because I love myself as a stitch in a quilt, a part of a whole, some of my archival belongs to the people that see me.
Let’s begin.
Act I: Germination
My first era of life was spent in the lovingkindness of anonymity.
Such is life in the mountains— one thing they will do is shelter you. Earth that’s stacked toward heaven like that is hard to get to know. She slow to like and she longer to love. Mountains and the love you find there press on you in ways that renegotiate time. They impress upon you timelessness. I appreciate moving slow from being brought up there. Mountains make you get to know your neighbors because you need each other to survive them. And the mountains I was raised in (the Colorado Rockies) were kind to me in their various reminders: that I was teeny and always will be. That clean, good air is a blessing. That I am lucky to be so small and yet held so gingerly by mighty Mama Earth. “We ourselves are only her fingertips, her eyelashes,” they chorus. “How big she is; how gentle all the same for choosing to hold your hand every day.”
Mountains also remind you of how little you’ll ever know and it makes you breathe a sigh of relief. This world exudes stress in its constant quest to become larger than life; I was always content as a finite little being because of the mountains that made me. For me, life was about as long and thick as a tree— and I wasn’t dealt an easy life necessarily, but it had the character of ease, if that makes sense— there is only so much you allow yourself to be rushed when you can hear trees and what they say to you. They talk so low and so slow.
It was a childhood where I felt the rise and fall of every day. I never, never woke up and thought, my goodness I can’t wait to be an adult.
Colorado was my first love, which I first defined without realizing as how much I’d been given or how much I was willing to give without asking. I had a family with love in it, I had friends; my child body did not feel love and name it until I watched the winter sky bruise periwinkle with planets and stars that hung glittering over the peaks, like a lover loathe to leave. Until the sun set in the west at 10pm while I had my first honeysuckle. The breeze is sweet and I say, “Oh. This is love.”
I learned to journal in the cradle of the trees, actually. All my important conversations with myself and with God Creator happened at least twenty feet off the ground (as a security measure). The trees kept all my secrets, and I kept theirs. It was this one day in a garden when I was thirteen that they revealed to me I had their roots inside my chest cavity. That paper could keep me and my secrets just like they do. That I could belong to myself just as much as I belonged to everyone else— even more than that. That I was someone worth belonging to in the first place.
I had my own self dangling from the end of my pen and tasted love for the second time. I didn’t know I’d been hiding from myself until I called my own name and heard an answer within me. Thirteen and dreaming of what selfhood feels like when the only person that owns me is me. Thirteen and looking at raspberries bend their whole plant because they’ve grown up to be thick and ripe and on display. Thirteen and thinking of what it could be like to be all ripe and ready like that. I named my notebook Thesilina and began to germinate.
This is the blessing of anonymity: no one talks to a little Black girl up in a tree. No one asks you any probing questions. No one is interested in the minute of your day, not even your parents. Most days, no one even sees you— not many people think to look up when they walk outside. By the time I picked a pen and found myself, I had the freedom of zero follow-up questions and a 10pm curfew. Blessed, sweet privacy. No one in my family ever attempted to read what I wrote down— I truly don’t think my parents even thought about it. Invaluably, I was alone with myself feeling through my own desire for my body and my time and my own sovereignty. I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted anything worse than I wanted myself in my own entirety.
Raspberries tasted just like me. I opened up pages and gobbled myself down.
Act II: Stolen Blooms
My love affair with myself began cataclysmic and I knew it even then. For one matter, I was dying. I told you: it was a life with ease of character, not ease of circumstances. My circumstances were, point blank, going to kill me (or I was going to put myself out of my own misery). The reasons why are for another essay, but for the purposes of this one: Death breathed and heaved over me like July stormclouds, just thick and delicious and promising to come cool and all at once. Dying young seemed like a neutral fact of life, like falling to sleep on Christmas Eve even while you try and fight it. Death was a matter of when, not if.
I was also wrong to think in terms of ownership, and I knew it then too. A relationship with myself that could last (like, truly last) could only ever thrive in balance, with true agency reciprocity, where I choose myself and my body chooses me back and my mind oversees the union, and we move together like that. A daily choice, hesitantly made— long to love and slow to like. I knew I was rushing into things with someone I had quite literally just met, but I was teeny— when you are young like I was (and like I am), the world has a way of convincing you that everything you’ll ever be is right in front of your eyes. Plus, there was that whole matter of “I’m pretty sure I’m not going to live to see sixteen.” I generally felt like I was moving on borrowed time so… might as well do it hot and fast, right? In the meeting and the keeping myself, I, Juliet, was my own Romeo.
I will tell you this because I am endeavoring to be honest with you all: I did not fucking care. I knew I was being selfish and I could feel myself bottling up all this hot ash and I promise you I did not care. And I tried! It’s not like I wanted to leave someone the trauma of finding me stilled and cooled and at peace. It just… it felt so good to luxuriate and decay in places no one else could see. I reached inside myself and found the earth and I said mine. And I began to bury me. This disposition intoxicated me, the thought that I could account for myself, and keep all of me, and not spill or share one singular drop. That I was mine and mine alone. It was good like when you’re doing drugs with no intent to come down. I assumed I’d be dead before I’d ever need to sober up.
And then (there it is, the predictable and then), Words began to find their way out of me.
It happened in public, which is the most embarrassing part! Somebody fucked up and handed me a mic. I could tell you who, in fact: it was my youth pastor (lame). I was a child and so I could not see that I was silly for thinking I could have my own secrets. I hand’t yet understood that other people saw things that I hadn’t developed the eyes for. I also have one of the loudest dispositions I have ever seen radiate off a person; my thoughts flash across my face with the strength and clarity of a gospel choir soprano. It was truly so unserious of me to think I could keep all my own secrets that young. Like. Imagine having a chest full of trees and deluding yourself into thinking that no one can see the branches but you.
I could not own my own soils any more than I could own the earth, and me and the mountains are the same thing. Slow to like, long to love, visible for miles and miles around. It’s just that at that time, the only example I had of love was one rooted in possession and ownership. I did not know how to exist in community with myself— I did not even know that was possible.
Even in speaking, in learning to navigate a mic and a stage and a spotlight, it wasn’t really for me. It was for “sharing my God-given talents with the world.” Read: it was for white adults who applauded me while I died in front of them, and I was so eager to please. Growing up in the white evangelical Christian church made me such a glutton for pain. White folks with money really do love to watch a Black Girl Bleed. Agony on display in my essays and in my poetry and they applaud. I am dying in front of you, I would rumble into the mic. And that declaration would always be followed up with a bigger mic, a larger stage, and more applause. This is the first time you ever hear that honest, toothy voice, bright in your mind voice from back to front: Hey. Hey. Everyone can see you. Are you certain you want to be seen like this?
I think, after all this, I became a recluse. I was too young to love the stage— I didn’t have the wherewithal to make that choice. When you start existing in that kind of emotional nudity at fourteen, and when you do so for survival, you don’t really have time to think about your relationship to performance. I didn’t love the stage; I didn’t like the stage; it just was a part of my week. The loose warmth of something familiar and not altogether unpleasant. As neutral as Death himself. I am dying, I wrote and was handed a scholarship. We are dying, I penned and was handed research money. More stages. More money. Bigger mics. Nothing to ever fix the problems.
Sometime in college, while I lost family to poverty and to stress, and while Ebola was still a case study in my Global Health courses, this stitch of time where I had to wade between this life and this death to find the cadence of every day— this was the time I realized I was owned. I saw how brilliant Pain is and why it’s so lucrative. How… ritualistic all of this was. How much my blood looks like diamonds. How much they (the audience, waiting bated-breath) is willing to pay for my blood. Diamonds. I want it in diamonds, since I am so sacred to the ritual of this world order. These people are going to pay for my blood in diamonds.
Once I realized the precarity of my place, that the love of institution was still just ownership by other names (like publication), I came to a screeching halt. I was a senior in college and I blamed it on burn out. It was so much more than just exhaustion. It was repulsion at coming to understand that I has sold my mind, my fertile earth, to the academy without even realizing. That this life of mine was built on turning my thoughts into some tangible, supple thing that Bleeds so I could tack it with some words— a butterfly pinned shiny on a cork board. Pieces of flesh stitched together with someone’s humanity and immortalized on the page. This university that paid for my health insurance and new laptops in exchange for my fertile earth. These were not the pages of the trees that once held regard for me. This was love in ownership, again. There is no freedom in the academy. I had pimped my mind out to a new age plantation and they wanted me to pretend like I liked it. Graduate school began to knock and I was celebrated. I received the prize for all my scholastic excellence: more hard work. I shut my mind off. She had seen enough. Nothing in my purse but lipgloss, a MacBook and a change of hell.
What was coming next was not safe for us; I didn’t know how to keep our secrets anymore. I didn’t even trust myself. I kissed my pen and put her in the pocket between one rib and another. I graduated college; I did not publish my thesis; I began my master’s program and I laid us all to rest with a two line refrain.
I have misplaced my seams.
My grief spills everywhere.
Act III: What I Owe to the Sun
I don’t have much to say in public about my time as a dancer, except that I appreciated it for its honesty. There was no delusion or pretense to the job— your body is on display and you are paid accordingly. Literally just like academia, except better paid and with far more agency over your day to day. The strip club is a place where you actually need to be honest with yourself, because there are some bits of you cannot come into work. There is no money at the club waiting for you if you are not capable of a precise, thorough self inventory. I shed what I need to when I take off my sweats. My brain gets put in a jar, and the jar in my locker. This process was very rinse and repeat with me. Beauty rituals require brutal self appraisal as a daily practice of sanctification. I never really surprise myself with the parts of me that make it out of the locker room— I have been performing my whole life.
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We flash forward a handful of years in a montage of black lights and white lingerie and morning-after alcohol. This is really why I don’t talk much about the club— it’s fr one part spite towards a nosy ass internet and three parts because I would run out of things to say five minutes into an essay. It is more or less uneventful. Sure, every now and again Something Happens, but most days, it’s just Tuesday. Every day is a Tuesday. My life tumbles forward. I renegotiate myself at the start of every day on what I am and what I would like to keep.
Except. Except. Here is our final and then. And then, after I’d been in the ring for a while, long enough to know better than what I was doing, I started swinging myself around on the pole. Just to try it. Just to see if I could. Because I was too fucked up to say, no, maybe it isn’t a stellar idea to try flips for the first time with an audience and a stomach full of cucumbers, hummus, and champagne. Because I was sick with envy that other girls were better dancers than me. Because I didn’t realize I still had this unrealized dream of dancing on the world’s stage, where everyone could see me. I am not pristine enough for the world’s stage, and I am too much of a perfectionist to embarrass myself, but this... this was most certainly not an audience of everyone. And I was so, so intoxicated. I flipped myself over and started flying. I don't think I've hit the ground yet.
The first night I ever pole-danced (as in, really fucking did that shit pole danced), I pulled an inversion I’ve only ever seen me do in my dreams. I was fucked up and in new heels because mine broke on me during my last stage set, and I wasn’t about to go home, I had my prettiest lingerie on. I remember hearing my first ever stage song play over me diamonds on my neck, di- diamonds on my wrists. And I remembered what these people owe to me. And I remember thinking to the chorus that lives in my head, this stage is going to be soaked by the time I’m done. And my body found its way into spinning, upside down, arms in front of me, grabbing my back leg, hanging there like a ballerina in a snow globe. And money rained down.
Here is that bright and toothy voice, who I now call Auntie Dae: It’s a shame everyone can’t see you do this. You are a star. You love the stage. You were born a dancer. Remember?
Oh. I… do. I love the stage. I think I missed the stage.
This was also a stage in life where I was passively dying. As much as the club low-key saved my life, I was only ever so attached— here enough to function and to drink and little more. Remember where we are in this season of life: gone past the mountains years ago, fooling folks into thinking I’m a true blue city bitch, hiding my brilliance from graduate school so the university cannot take myself from me again, hiding my real identities and signifiers at work for my own safety, hiding my work from my family, somehow never hiding from myself because I needed an honest self inventory to survive all this. A secret that radiated off me: I was not doing a great job at surviving all this. I felt the familiar cool, delicious storm clouds swirling above me and thought, not at all startled: those clouds are so low I can’t see my hands in front of me. I remembered the last time I couldn’t see anything past my current age. I was fifteen. That was the year I tried to kill myself and failed.
I was there at 23, watching me drink bottle after bottle of work-sponsored top shelf liquor and thinking somewhere distant, maybe I should save myself. Followed up with a revision, when that felt like too grand a task, maybe I should save bits of myself somewhere. Just in case I survive this, like I keep doing. I will want to know what happened to me. So I did two things. I kept one notebook over three years (a record low but it was better than nothing). And I picked up TikTok, at least in part, to have a means of documentation of myself in spite of my hiding. Maybe that’s just me making a story out of things— but never in my life had I really felt like I had things to say to the public until now, in this season of hibernation.
One last bit of crucial honesty before we get back to the plot: writing and keeping record of myself and my circumstances was crucial to my survival as a teenager. I am going to talk about this openly because I think a decent amount of teenagers follow me, and because I am a mental health professional, and because I would have loved it if more adults were honest with me about suicidality. There was a time after my suicide attempts (on and off from fifteen to twenty-three) where I did not have the will to live, I just lacked the will to die. Death is a commitment in a way the shuffle of every day life is not. Just because I did not actively want to be alive anymore does not mean I magically wanted to stay. I had incredibly important spiritual revelations after 15 about choice and destiny and being anchored to this world. My understanding had grown: I was meant to be on this earth still. I just had no idea why. It was a day to day that I characterize as the Chicago winter impressing itself on the skyline: every day is gray. Some days, the fog is lower than others.
We went on like this until my brain clicked into place at almost 24. [This sounds corny but I am so serious. You can trust me to be honest and so I am telling you: life really does get better when your brain is done growing. Please hang in there.] Anyways. I am there, breaths from my next stage of life that I do not know is coming yet, a couple years into the club, a couple years into graduate school, having made a full revolution (as in all the way back to start) around the ten year anniversary of me answering a notebook’s call and deeming myself worth writing down. I made a TikTok (just one video) because I was attempting to pretend it wasn’t that deep. And then I immediately went viral. THIS is our last and then, forget what I said earlier: you make your cute lil speaking video and then the first TikTok you ever make goes viral. Look at you, foolish! You called the Stage and she came running. What did you think would happen? And you look good on the stage. There’s the truth. You are supposed to be up here.
We’re at the end of the montage and you are easing yourself into the spotlight, just barely. You’re trying to pretend like it’s super normal to hit six figure follower counts in as many weeks. Life is still fractured, and that is okay. It gets glued together bit by bit and it’s good for you to learn patience. We are back here at this moment when this lady clocks you while you are insert stripper name here and startles you speechless. [Ha! You. Speechless. Anyways.]
You cannot think of a lie so you just smile and say yes, you are. And she’s cool. In fact, she says, “it makes you cooler, knowing that you do this. That you are like a really full person off screen.” Leaving you wondering what it would be like if everyone on the internet knew. If you family knew. If one day your life was not so dissected and pinned apart and you didn’t have to pretend like you were ashamed of yourself. Maybe the mess belongs on stage just as much as you do.
And this time, the stage is on more of my own terms. Not quite, not all the way. But certainly more than before, at the club. At church. At school. You have more freedom to expand and contract and so many kind people watching you. People are watching us. People are taking inspiration and joy from us when you yourself could not give myself those things. And instead of constant dying and constant public spectacle, we balance the hardness of things. I have always been one to wear my hardships on my wrists and now here I am having folks assume I had a rich kid life with healthy attachments to my parents. Befuddling. Amazing. Look how fast you found yourself, sharing us in moments, in morsels of time you found lovely. Then… just like that. Self-documenting. Archival.
I cannot help but love myself, even when I do not like myself. And what better love than the love of being kept, collected, considered?
a brief letter to me on my 23rd birthday entitled, “forgive me for spoiling the ending.”
At the time this picture was taken, you have only just begun to understand how vast you are and how pointless it is to try and underperform. You were raised up by the mountains and cemented in the sun. You, a Leo! You thought you could run and hide when you got scared. Imagine thinking you’d be raspberries your whole life. You are a grown-up now. You have made it to adulthood and you are surprised your flowers changed and bloomed. Welcome to your era of sunflowers.
I am an amalgamation of the people that built me and if I am honest, good and honest, I have been built in part by the public eye. I have been pieced together by and under the center spotlight. Fourteen was such a tender age to take the stage ; there are some ways I will never unsee my body as opportunity ; it was what it is. I can never go backwards, and me hiding wasn’t backwards, it was around again in the same orbit. All it did was delay the inevitable. When I speak, it feels like branches are shooting out of my chest. I am most rooted when I feel my voice carry on the sun rays. People from all over the world listen in on your lives, on your podcast, quite literally on your musings and solidifies what I already knew: the reason we prohibited social media in our life as a teenager is because we knew what would happen to me if the internet saw me speak. How hilarious it is that I thought I could run! I was always going to be up here. You were built by the sun; you owe those rays you soaked up a second chance at shining.
Well, beloved, you survive. You survive your next big heartbreak and your freakouts about graduate school and your wild ass landlords. You survive the pilgrimage home and back to yourself, night after night. Era after era. So much gumption! My stars, you amaze me. I will spoil this ending for you, which is just the middle of my own block. I am still here, making notes in the margins for us. I have new questions of love to consider; they are as follows.
How do I love myself best in public? What is self love when a part of me always belongs to the people?
I haven’t reread the notebook you kept loosely during this time but I cannot wait
love and love,
@ismatu.gwendolyn, one year in
Final thoughts: archival is not only a study of self. it is a declaration of love. I love myself and so I want to remember. I am enthralled with the smallest bits of this life seeding and sprouting years later, when I have the fertile earth to hold onto them. I surprise myself with what I grow, even still, after all this time. I expected to look back and see the wildflowers of my youth littered everywhere the wind blows. I am shocked, ten years later, to see what fourteen year old planted in their left hand as she wrote to me with her right: there, blooming up from the margins: stocky, bright, thick-stemmed flowers turning their face up to the sun. I keep myself and in doing so, I declare me worth keeping. And this time, I open up my garden heart to the people that see and see me, that have found ways to love me in sincerity with even the smallest glimpses of my life. I spare a seed where I am able. I know I am in a temporary space and I am flying all the same.
I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease. I hope you have something left over to say to your future self at the end of the day.
warmest regards,
ismatu g.
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A child model turned grad school stripper speaks openly about the reality of being shackled to Beauty (and the negotiations you make at the top of the hierarchy).
Read the full essay at ismatu.substack.com.
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Welcoming in Season II of Threadings. Notes on my the orbit of my personhood.
An essay once titled, “how do I love myself?” (but I didn’t know what I meant by “love,” so first i sound it out)
Themes of the essay:
love is the feeling that compels you to action and the action itself. Poetry is the thesis of my life and practicing it is an act of love. Black feminism and love studies are, in many ways, the same discipline. I am just as much of the earth as the mountains are.
Read the full essay at ismatu.substack.com.
Next episode in The Study of Self: love of my physical being
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in which I tell you about where I've been, where I've ended up, and where I'm going from here.
Jazz of the episode:
Send In The Clowns x Pat Martino
On the Sunny Side of the Street x Johnny Hodges
For All We Know x Ahmad Jamal
Lilacs in the Rain x Junior Mance
Dat Dere (Theme) x Bobby Timmons Trio
The Summer Knows x Bucky Pizzarelli
Down and Out x Joel Lyssarides
Tangerine x George Van Eps
Inflight x Lennie Tristan’s, Lenny Popkin
Golden Earrings x Jan Lundgren Trio
Land of Dreams x Ahmad Jamal
Gungala Serenata x Luigi Malatesta, Franco Bitcoin, Sandro Brugnolini
Blue and Sentimental x Oscar Peterson
My Wish x Hank Jones
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musings once entitled, “a therapist reflects on the whiplash of finally having relationships with my parents i am grateful for, despite it all.” In which I watch the love I have for my parents bloom and die and bloom again.
Full transcription available at ismatu.substack.com
Jazz of the episode:
Cicada Season x Fuubutsushi
Manhattan x BLOSSOM DEARIE
Melancholia x Wynton Marsalis
The Single Petal Of A Rose x Ben Webster
You Go To My Head x Frank Sinatra
Michelle x Yusuf Lateef
Easy Living x Clifford Brown
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit ismatu.substack.com
hellooooo internet friends!
Coming at you liveeee from my teeny temporary bedroom in my father’s house. my life rn is nothing close to what i expected and i promise you i STAY g…
We owe the children of this world tangible and lasting justice— and economic justice touches every kind of oppression there is.
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an open letter to everyone fearful and exhausted, sent with love.
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Ismatu Gwendolyn, clinical social worker and former impoverished child, doubles down on the ugly (and obvious) truth of why poverty exists in the first place.
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If you’re reading or listening this, that means I’ve decided to pull back one of the veils of my life and tell you a little bit about my family history. My name is Ismatu Bangura, I am a Sierra Leonean Black American, and I am also the granddaughter of Paramount Chief Alhaji Bombolai [may he rest in peace].
Here is how my lineage affects my politic. Full transcription at substack.ismatu.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Introductions to a month-long series about poverty eradication, labor rights, and reproductive justice. Partnered with a fundraiser to help agricultural production for indigenous folks in Sierra Leone!
Link to donate: gogetfunding.com/ismatu-gwendolyn
Read the full essay: substack.ismatu.com
SOURCES
2022 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, linked in article
Portela, J. (2021, January 15). 70% of the world lives on less than ten dollars a day. when do they get the vaccine? Stanford Politics. Retrieved January 9, 2023, from https://stanfordpolitics.org/2021/01/14/70-of-the-world-lives-on-less-than-ten-dollars-a-day-when-do-they-get-the-vaccine/
World Bank Group. (2018, October 17). Nearly half the world lives on less than $5.50 a day. World Bank. Retrieved January 9, 2023, from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day
How much money per day does the average person live on? Cultural World. (2023, January 8). Retrieved January 9, 2023, from https://www.culturalworld.org/how-much-money-per-day-does-the-average-person-live-on.htm
Creamer, J. (2021, December 9). Inequalities persist despite decline in poverty for all major race and Hispanic origin groups. Census.gov. Retrieved January 9, 2023, from https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html
Jazz Music of the Episode:
Tezetayé Antchi Lidj (Baby, My Unforgettable Remembrance) x Mulatu Astatke
Whisky Story Time x Alabaster DePlume
Cicada Season x Fuubutsushi
Lena's Songs The Sweet Enoughs
Michelle x Yusef Lateef
The Single Petal of a Rose x Ben Webster
These Foolish Things x Lester Young
Easy Living x Clifford Brown
Love Song from "Apache" x Coleman Hawkins Quartet
Manhattan x BLOSSOM DEARIE
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
I do not set goals in January and I never will. I love myself too much to rush myself out of my winter hibernation.
Why do we impose so much on a year that we just met? How do I hope for the harvest when I have not even tilled the earth yet? The ground is frozen! What if we just... sat and rested instead? In which Ismatu Gwendolyn discusses treating January gently and changing the name of the podcast to Threadings.
read the full essay at ismatu.substack.com.
Jazz of the episode:
The Single Petal Of A Rose x Ben Webster
These Foolish Things x Lester Young
Easy Living x Clifford Brown
Love Song From "Apache" x Coleman Hawkins Quartet
Manhattan x BLOSSOM DEARIE
Abide With Me x Thelonious Monk Septet
For Every Mountain x Amber Bullock
...Feeling Good x Elvin Jones
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Can true, full, and nuanced love truly exist across parasocial relationships? Ismatu Gwendolyn reflects on the dehumanizing nature of fame (no matter how small the audience) and reflects on their own conceptions of love (or lack thereof) as they accidentally became an influencer.
read the full newsletter and join the bookclub: ismatu.substack.com
Jazz of the episode:
Skylark x Wynton Marsalis
Feeling Good x Elvin Jones
It's Too Late Now x Wynton Marsalis
Manhattan x BLOSSOM DEARIE
Love Song From "Apache' x Coleman Hawkins Quartet
But Not For Me - Live at the Pershing, Chicago, 1958 x Ahmad Jamal Trio
'Round Midnight x Thelonious Monk
Willow Weep for Me x Ray Bryant
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit ismatu.substack.com
in which I read from The Annotated African American Folktales and she occasionally gives a heartfelt "mmm."
listen to the full story at Ismatu.substack.com.
The Twin Heroes: An African Myth adapted by Alphonso O. Stafford | from the section “Folktales from The Brownies’ Book” out of The Annotated African American Folktales
Da’Shaun L. Harrison has penned one of my favorite texts in the past five years. I have read it three times in nine months and I have become more and more delighted with the person that I become absorbing these words. In Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, Harrison presents theoretical frameworks that compel us to meaningful action. I will tell you now and I will tell you for free: belief that compels me to meaningful action is exactly my st. I am grateful, to my bones, for theory. Blessed are the workers who make the way clearer with their weighty, weighty words. I relish texts like this.
read the full essay (and join bookclub!) at ismatu.substack.com
Jazz songs of the episode:
Skylark x Wynton Marsalis
Abide With Me x Thelonious Monk Septet
Fools Rush In x Teddy Wilson (this is what was playing when my mom interrupted me)
My Romance x Gene Ammons (remastered by Rudy Van Gelder)
Confirmation - Take 3 / Master x Charlie Parker Quartet
Cup Bearers x Tommy Flanagan, George Mraz, and Elvin Jones
A Sleepin' Bee x Wynton Marsalis
Stomping At The Savory x Red Gardland, Paul Champers, Art Taylor
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Instead of willing myself to love something that I simply do not, what if I was honest in my self-loathing? What might I be compelled to change if I did not feel morally bound to positivity?
Read the full, pictured essay, sign up for the newsletter, and grab bonus materials at ismatu.substack.com
Jazz Songs of the episode:
Love, I’ve Found You by Wynton Kelly
Warm Valley by Johnny Hodges
Nancy (With The Laughing Face) by John Coltrane Quartet
In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning by Wynton Marsalis
Concerto for Trumpet, 2 Oboes, Strings and Continuo in D Major: II. Largo by Johann Friedrich Fasch et. al
Someone to Watch over Me by Marcus Robert
I Heard You Cried Last Night by Phil Woods, Vic Juris
Autumn in New York by The Modern Jazz Quartet
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
what kindness do I owe terror? Is there a better relationship I can have with my own fear than kill it, ignore it, eradicate it? Ismatu Gwendolyn makes some apologies and benedictions over fear itself.
read the full essay and see very cute pictures of Ismatu as a child at ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
How is self love entangled with parental love? I am blooming into adulthood realizing that so much of myself is directly sourced from the people that raised me. For all her flaws and despite all her fumbles, how do I love do I love this mother of mine? In the same way I love myself.
Enjoy the full essay and poem at Ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
What sort of love can we have for ourselves that we keep our own promises? Do I love myself in way that spurs me to act in my own best interest? In the way man loves man, divine loves humanity, and human reaches for the divine— can we too reach for ourselves with a love that compels us to action? What does the love of keeping my own promises look and feel like?
subscribe to the newsletter: ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
Is it possible to pursue Excellence unabashedly without it being capitalism's fault? Do we have work spaces that are not defined by or centered around the work of money? How do we have a loving relationship with ourselves as working beings while living in a society with exploitative practices?
Ismatu Gwendolyn discusses the work they do in public to shine a light on the relationship they have with their work in private. Join them as they sip some lavender chamomile tea.
read the full essay at ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
First of all, I want to rebuke this nonsense that I am a Bey hater.
Enjoy this lil appetizer while I work on the full episode. And share!! Don’t be stingy.
Nobody knows how to critique anymore and it makes my ass itch. How can you say Beyoncé works hard enough to deserve the right to underpay her seamstresses for Ivy Park? They can't afford Ivy Park leggings that they sew with three months worth of wages-- that's not textbook oppression to you? The other side is able to bite down on class critiques but then wants to say she's overrated or untalented. BEYONCÉ? Pls go brush your tongue. Put on some chapstick. Your mouth is stinking.
I am here to give libations to an artist that inspires me and to grieve when she is so utterly disappointing. How do you dawn Black radical tradition and be an open capitalist? This is what you choose to do with your encyclopedic knowledge of Black canon and culture in the US? You play in our face to fund the champagne bottles you dump into a pool? This lady fs on feminism like a nigga she love to ride on but would never let spend the night. But she's so excellent in her craft that the effort alone feels* like she does.
Beyoncé don't love us. Or she maybe do, but not like I want to be loved.
Read the whole essay at ismatu.substack.com.
Listen or read the last episode: I kinda wanna f*ck Excellence. This was actually (fully inspired by Beyoncé's line, They hate me because they want me). You can subscribe to the newsletter to get in on that good good, or you can stream it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Her Music Academia is a podcast where a dope ass Black girl talks music theory.
Lydia Bangura (already so well known in her field for her exemplar viola and vocal performance, speaking ability, and Black women-centric research focus) is a second-year student and teaching fellow at The University of Michigan. She manages to be so cute and interesting that she makes me love music theory?? How. Amazing. What a star. She already has one episode on Beyoncé up! Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen!
Even if you hate this, I am actually giving you something decent to discuss, with sources! AND I’m saying it on record. Nobody wants to deal with the portion of the Bey fanbase that compulsively licks boots and I opened myself up to that nonsense for you people. Pay me for it via the substack!! Especially if you are white okay have a good one!! <3
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
I kinda wanna fk Excellence.**
Hello. It (at the time I write this) is a Tuesday in September. I want to welcome you to The Garden Space, a newsletter and podcast where me and all my internet friends explore the planting and blooming of human connection. I invite you to be easy. I invite you to move slowly with me. It is well into the afternoon and I am still in my robe. I am having a cup of carrot cake tea (yes, you heard me right it is exactly as magical as it sounds) and I am drawing this kettle out I am taking blissful, indulgent, measured, easy sips I am licking my glossy lips along the way. I am reading you an essay I wrote, entitled “…I kinda wanna f**k Excellence” and I know what I said. I know what I just said. I ask you to pause.
Lmao. So.
I am submitting to you all, my Internet Friends, my first “okay… so hear me out” essay. Yes I know the title sounds click-baity! Yes, I know the majority of you all clicked on this and went “truly, what on God’s green earth could this episode consist of.” I also recognize in talking openly about sex or sexual desire, even sexual desire for my own self, I ruffle some feathers. It’s always uncomfortable, at least in the onset. I promise you I am not pimping out your knee-jerk reactions just for engagement. I want to make clear the reasons that I share the following ideas with you all. Two big things:
One: love, of any kind, is not theoretical.
In this online space we are set out to explore a whole lot of love theory. Many peoples across millennia have been thinking of, talking about, tasting, touching, theorizing on love in its many forms. I am no different. I am, like you, a philosopher, trying to ascertain the how and the why of the way my insides turn themselves out in the name of loving. Alexander Pope in 1711 very famously said, “To err is human; to forgive divine.” I would like to figure out where love measures on that scale. What measure of love is human? How much of love is divine?
Theory is designed to be a guiding light, a North Star wrapped in words, of sorts. Even if we might momentarily float above ourselves to look at our positions in this world with a bird’s eye view, theory is not supposed to leave your body behind forever. Sometimes I feel like we can get so turned around in what is theoretical, what is supposed to be, that we forget that the business of loving is literal. It is human. It is in our day to day. Love lives in our bodies and our actions and our peoples. As much as we theorize, there is nothing theoretical about love.
Two: love, of many kinds, is explicit.
I again blame the West for this— this clinical, puritanical, cut and dry image we have of love. There are many different kinds of love, which we will begin to explore in depth in later episodes. I had been wanting a podcast for a while, but I settled on The Garden Space because of a TikTok that I made that went viral about my different bars of love that determine a person’s role in my life (those bars are platonic, romantic, and sexual). Folks love a graph. We love a cute and succinct sixty second idea. We love the feeling of learning, of understanding, the allure of productivity and I am not knocking that. I love all that too! And if that’s the video that brought you here (or if any of my videos brought you here), then I love that too. Welcome.
However. Bar graphs are clinical. Me talking about my intense desire to be bent over by the concept of Excellence? Visceral.
And most times, at least for me, the feeling of love is visceral. This is something I feel. Sometimes those feelings are sexual— even when there is not a literal object to covet. I am not attempting to make you squirm. I am trying to embody the feelings of love I feel and be honest in doing so. And, honest to goodness, when I think about Excellence now, these days, I physically get goosebumps. I would like to explore that phenomenon with you, as I learn in real time.
Sex love in the Western world gets a bad rap. We treat it like it doesn’t exist. Sure, there’s romantic love, which we are obsessive over. There’s plantonic love, which is easy for us to grasp. There is communal love, or empathy, or love for humanity. It is easier for us to understand the love for people that we don’t know than the love we can feel internally or externally in sex. I almost feel like we treat sex like there is no love to be found there if it isn’t coupled with something else.
That’s an entirely different podcast essay, it is. And we will get there. But today, I would like to discuss the feelings before I discuss the theory, since this is literal, and for me, this business of loving is visceral. So yeah. I kinda wanna f**k Excellence.
I ask you again: hear me out. I feel like by the end of things you will understand where I am with all this.
I kinda wanna fk Excellence.**
Two rather obvious follow-up questions:
(1) who or what is Excellence? And further,
(2) how exactly does one have sexual intent towards a metaphysical idea?
Let’s begin.
Thank you for reading The Garden Space. This post is public so feel free to share it.
I’ve been chewing on this topic like toughened Double Bubble. I have had a contentious, strained relationship with Excellence my whole life. By dictionary definitions, or maybe by common understandings:
Excellence is the state, quality, or condition of excelling. A state of superiority.
Herein lies my first big gripe: superior to what? Excelling over what bar, by whose metric? It’s hard not to taste capitalism forming the word in my mouth. Even in the beginning, baked into the definition, is the reality of comparison. Comparison grates on my spirit. My word. I will be honest with you at the risk of sounding conceited; I did not have many peers growing up. K-12 education was spent around white kids that only ever performed as well as I did, which was always pretty… deeply unimpressive to me since I had half the resources and I knew that. I was regularly the standard of my craft (which has always, always been writing). My pen moves and the world does with it. Writing feels like breathing. I have always been excellent in that regard.
So then comparison was always isolatory at best. It’s lonely at the top, or whatever. But also, kids are vicious— especially white kids that feel like they deserve an A more than you. At worst, the constant game of comparison (which happened to me regardless of whether I participated or not) was punishing. Incredibly punishing. I always think of Excellence in terms of the high jump (an apparatus that I was quite good at in the brief season of life I ran track). I happily competed in high jump until I learned the bar could paralyze you. I cannot imagine a better visualization for the way that Excellence shows up in my life. It’s really a poet’s wet dream. I set my own standards of Excellence, meaning I erect my own bar of “good enough” and fracture myself trying to clear it. The shame of landing on the bar is intense too— you run for it, you leap for it, you turn yourself in the air and feel the small of your back connect with your own disqualification. And then you spend the whole fall wondering if you’ll land and lose your ability to walk. Excellence always felt to me like a losing game— either I pass with flying colors and I have no friends, and see the bar raised immediately after with no time to celebrate your victory. Or I fail to clear the bar. I meet my own standards with metal to bone and I crack.
Brutal. Brutal and unsustainable.
By the time I got to college I’d really married myself to the idea of “just good enough.” Do as much as necessary to get what you want. You don’t have to be Excellent, you only have to be Enough.
Which was, for all its intents, a wonderful idea. Enough meant well and does well, sincerely. For the period of time where I was navigating imposter syndrome, or dealing with the discomfort of class mobility, or simply questioning my own worth, Enough was a valuable lesson. Enough was a relief. It was healing. Where Excellence had to be earned, Enough was freely given. The task of being grand, being great, being excellent was completely unattainable for where I was: seventeen, at college, floating, untethered, still fractured. Still learning to walk again where before I could sprint. It was a lot gentler, a lot sweeter. Enough feels round and soft in my mouth, easier thing to hold onto; swallowing on something filling and soft, like fresh bread.
How to be Enough was a simple study of self and is an entirely different feeling than the pursuit of Excellence. Enough was the place I learned to be friends with myself again. It’s deserving of an essay on its own. That narrative arch was clear and beautiful. I began to like my own company. I could create without fear of critique. Ugh, and it was stunning. I really thought I had solved my problems. And then! And then. I got… bored.
I began to look around. I still had… very few peers, honestly. Nothing was interesting enough to hold my attention. So I looked up, like I used to do. Like I hadn’t done in years. Excellence was still swinging above my head, just out of my reach, taunting me. Infuriating. Still , as always, a losing game. It sincerely felt like a cruel joke from the universe. I did not have the focus, or the skill, or the brain chemical balance, or the work ethic, or the something. Something. The pursuit of Excellence always felt punishing and inauthentic.
I settled into my skin more, waded through the journey, ate my Enough bread to keep me going, arrived very bitterly at the end of that predetermined storyline and, instead of investigating my next step, still held fast to the lower, easier bread of Enough. Even when it began to be.. boring. Even when the bread started to mold.
Enter: effective mediocrity. A slow decay of tempering myself.
I began to rot.
In the literal world, my work was rotting. I was writing, but never really in public. Not in competitions, not for publications, not for anything that would propel my life forward. It was enough to just work on my craft, for a while. I went into a quiet, dark place where no one could judge me and let myself loose and it was (and is) lovely. The secret places I keep for myself and my creation are still gorgeous.
But my pen is powerful. My words are weighted. I had such incredible opportunities given to me I let slip and crack on the ground because I could not let myself into the light. That would have meant running again, running and leaping under the bright blue sun and sky, jumping for the bar of Excellence— the one I had not cleared in years. I have not written publicly all this time (years of my life), despite my parents, my teachers, my professors, my comment section begging me to because I understood there was a before and an after I expose my mind like this. It is vulnerable. It feels exactly like being naked in a room where everyone else is clothed and gawking at you (ask me how I know). But the terror— it doesn’t make me want myself any less. I love high jump. I miss high jump. When you are good, when you are great— excellent— it feels like you’re flying. Do you know what it is to fly, even if for a moment? It is a defining life experience. There is a before and an after you find and do something that makes you fly. And I want to. Fly, I mean. But failing costs me a lot. And it’s not just failure— it’s public failure, which is daunting.
…I suppose.
Though. If I am really honest. Being watched in public does raises my heart rate, but not necessarily in a bad way. If anything, as I witness other people seeing me and wanting me open, raw, unconcealed desire, unwrapped jealousy as they realize they do not compare, the business of coveting just soaked in money and opportunity and sweet things I am slick with want for myself. I only want myself up there more.
Impressing other people was never the problem. I can actually usually accomplish that with just my Enough. So many people are so impressed by some damn bread. For myself, I am not.
This is Excellence: to impress myself. me having enough conditioning, enough nourishment, enough skill stamina speed and strength to clear the bar I have set for myself. It is a hard feat. I had not done so in years. Not because I was suddenly worse. Because as I learned and grew, I understood more about what was possible with art. And because I was in life circumstances that made me too tired to run and train like I should.
But that did not stop me from the work of wanting. I want to impress myself. That is Excellence. I am my own peer, I am my own standard. I can only look up at this bar I have made to clear.
Can I tell you a secret (that might be obvious by now)?
I love the high jump.
This is the way I want explicit, sticky, rippling intimacy with Excellence. Soaring through the air like that is an out of body experience. It’s something I’ve tasted but not yet embodied, despite the want. Despite the years of deep and endless want that have all coiled in my gut and cemented into ashy resentment. Resentment covered in bile, acidified into hatred. I hated my Good Enough bar because I could never clear it. What an easy narrative. I know what I am about to say sounds very workaholic, hustle harder, get-it-girl culture of me, but… I don’t actually think my bar was the issue.
First of all, I had no business trying for Excellence when I wasn’t even convinced I was Enough. Of course I hurt myself. Excellence is a space for work and, for much of the last season of my life, I needed to be in the healing space of learning how to be self satisfactory. I do not turn to the high jump apparatus to find self-satisfaction. I run for it to impress myself. For that, I need to be well enough to do the work.
Secondly, my hitting the bar does not mean I need to lower the standards I have set for myself. It means that I need to train harder. I am, among many people, an expert in myself. I am certain of my own capacities. I can trust myself to give myself the flowers I deserve when I earn them, and it’s not actually a bad thing for to earn them. Yes, I have a high bar. Why wouldn’t I? I am thoroughly convinced of my own genius. Yes, I am hard to impress. Of course I am. I’m that bh.* What do I look like being easily impressed? I know the difference between good and great work as it passes through my hands, including my own. Especially my own. And I know the difference between great and Excellent work.
When I think about who I want to be, when I envision myself taking up the space I know I am designed to, when I see myself, my body, the slight of my hand, the curve of my neck positioned to receive all the good things I am stewing I am beside myself with lust. I, in this life, in real life (metaphors aside), am never more turned on than looking at my own naked body, so it makes sense I am also overcome with desire envisioning my future self’s successes. I have deep self attraction and that actually one of my favorite things about myself. Seeing the harvests of Ismatu tomorrow openly makes me horny. That’s what it is.
I have all this sexual tension with the literal concept of Excellence and I simply don’t know how else to explain it. I can see myself in the future, darker and riper and sweeter, an overgrown berry, bending the whole plant just begging to be in somebody’s mouth. What else is that? When I look to the self I wish to become, the body I want to live in, the work that passes through my hands with ease I pant. I feel goosebumps. I harden. I open. I still. My tongue runs across the ridges of my teeth I flex my toes I close my eyes before I even realize it. It’s me lightyears away, ten years away, two moments away, tomorrow, today. I see myself sailing over my bar again and again, with ease. I am flying. I roll in the sky, limbs outstretched, palms relaxed. I hook myself on the bar and spin. My breasts are free and falling off me. I know exactly what that feels like. I can see myself on the other side of the stage, now in the audience, watching me dance, seeing me glide, bearing witness to flight. Body dark and ripe and free. What else is that but sex? It’s unmistakably sex, the way I float. I am in a space in my life where Excellence no longer feels punishing— perfection does, and I conflated the two for a long time. Perfection is punishing by design because of its true impossibility. Excellence understands my only metric of comparison is me. I am my own standard and so Excellence is, by definition, attainable. She tastes sweet and tart. Bright. He makes me pucker my plump lips. I can see myself up there flying and embodying Excellence and he is ethereal. Dripping. Slick. What else is that? I can see the self I am going to bring down to earth and I am overcome with open, naked desire. The same sizzling energy of a live wire. My fingerprints are electric I am collected and eclectic twirling against a bright blue sky over a track field soaring// just soaring. Sailing over the bar into the sun. When I clear my bar like this I am Excellence personified. Every breath is warm and beating— what else is that but sex? This way that I love him, that I love the future self that hang glides above me like a heavy rain breeze— how else can I name that want but call it lust? Yes, I want me. Yes, I want it like that. I want to sail until I am smooth. I want to ripen until I fall. I want to soak in sun and gain sticky, lip-smacking weight until I bend the whole plant to show my deep and gleaming body. I look at myself and drool. I want a taste. What is that skill like? That precision? That level of faith in myself? I am going to taste or die trying. I did not know I could find work worth risking the paralysis but if I am honest I feel paralyzed on the ground, afraid of flying. And Enough is a wonderful, life making place to be but it’s only… just enough. Enough is like manna. It is nourishing. It falls from the sky, an open gift from the divine that I do nothing to earn but ask. I am fed and it is sufficient, and I will keep going. But that was in the desert. That was in a season of wandering and questioning, of healing. I have returned to myself and I want the body made of milk and honey. I am salivating for it. what else is that but sex, when sex loving makes me fly, when pole work makes me fly, I see myself up there flying. What else? What else can I call that? I want to fk Excellence and so of course I was mad as all sin down here, wanting and wanting something that hung just above my head, perpetually out of reach. I felt hot embarrassment for even looking Excellence’s way. By no means did I feel good enough for that much richness when even leavened bread felt too much in my belly. And that’s real— how often do we see resentment take the place of sexual envy? How long did I hate what was sexually liberated because I still had all this binding? Of course I hated Excellence. Of course I labeled her the enemy. It was the only way I could live with myself wanting something I did not feel like I deserved that*badly. I could not even bring myself to try pursuit. But now. But now. I am fed. I am rested. I know how it feels to fly like that, to ripen like that, to hang out nude like that in the middle of sky as the sun sets, not in a hurry, sweet as the day is long. Slick with sex. I have tasted what it is to be skilled enough to trust that whatever my body and mind combine to do with themselves, it will be beautiful. I know how it feels to get out of my own way. I know how my body feels through the sweltering pleasure of a job well done. Yes I want to f*k excellence and I make no apologies. You would too, if you saw me up there.
And when there is this much pleasure. Imagine the shivers I will feel when I land. Full and safe. And get to raise the bar.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
An introduction to Ismatu: I am Papier-mâchéd pieces of people that love me.
Recently, a patron asked me to reintroduce myself:
Who are you exactly? What do you do? Are you in grad school? Employed? You talk a lot about your politic— how do you embody what you believe in real life?
Sitting to define myself always results in a secondhand assessment. I can only approximate: where did I come from, what did I do. What am I, precisely? At the moment... quite amorphous. And quite alright with that. Stunning things rise up from the formlessness.
Read the full essay for free: ismatu.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe
The Wisteria.
My Aunt Nadaline blooms within me every spring.
She is long since gone. I did not realize the work she did to root in me when she was around, gap-tooth smiling, sneaking me Snapple when they still had glass bottles and pop tabs.
Now she is a place where I can go and sit and visit. Her branches long as the day. I did not realize that before her passing she held my little earth and left me a sapling. It grew quiet and steady, independently, and I did not realize then. Every time I went to sit in her company, be gazed upon, appraised, kept, she looked over the little tree I was too teensy to notice. Quietly, she watered the little mound of earth; measured the sprouts; nodded her approval. I never noticed. I was distracted by her smile. My front two teeth were coming in and I was praying every day to have a gap like hers and like my mom’s.
I was fourteen when I saw the little tree-- it was the year of her passing. I went into my journal to be with myself after The Phone Call, and there she was. Teeny. Miniature purple petals being carried by the breeze. I did not know what to make of it at the time. I did not know what I was looking at. I had not yet realized there was earth, fertile earth inside myself. There are many ways in which I feel grief is delayed. I did not understand the scope of it, the grief I felt, because I had only lived such a short while. I had only been without her for a minute. A day. A year.
It has been nine years this summer, shortly after I graduate with my master’s degree. I did not realize the heights and depths of grief until year nine, when I am in an apartment she would love but I cannot show her; when I am looking to tailor my convocation gown and cannot ask her opinions on the fabrics; when I am absentmindedly thinking of making tea and the kettle clicks on, reminding me she would like one too. It is raining today. I am having tea under the Wisteria while she blooms in the spring. She was a smidge past five foot in living; a small lady has grown such a wide tree. She shades me from the easy setting sun; I watch her float her blossoms to the ground, no longer miniature. She covers me. We stay like this a while.
I am weeping. I weep. But oh, how I am kept. And I have kept her, all this time.
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Me and my beloved friend + roomie Lorren discuss my exes, male-related stress, and how perplexing it is that there are men who cannot differentiate between basic vegetables.
Welcome to The Garden Space, a newsletter and podcast where we consider connection. What could it mean to be in community with oneself, one's intra and external space, as well as with one another? Where do I find myself? Ismatu Gwendolyn does a one-take reading of their essay, "The Garden Space: an Introduction."
When I reached inside myself one day and pulled out something to put on a page, I found bright green raspberry leaves. Who was surprised? They were just like me, the way they hung to themselves until the good, thick ongoings of July. I thought the fruits were so silly. They hid under big bright leaves but couldn’t resist growing so good and so ripe and so heavy they would bend the whole plant and give themselves away. Raspberry juice tasted just like me. It was the first time I had ever experienced watching myself bloom in real time.
I went inside myself and felt found. The first touch of my own earth humming hello under my bare toes. I had a garden space; how wonderful. This makes sense, I thought. The earth is everywhere.
Read the full essay at ismatu.substack.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe