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