i have two new pieces out in the world and wanted to make sure y’all saw them.
first, for valentine’s day, bitch magazine asked me to offer some thoughts on love.
the result is LOVE AS POLITICAL RESISTANCE, LESSONS FROM AUDRE LORDE AND OCTAVIA BUTLER – here’s an excerpt:
We’re all going to die if we keep loving this way, die from isolation, loneliness, depression, abandoning each other to oppression, from lack of touch, from forgetting we are precious. We can no longer love as a secret, or a presentation, as something we prioritize, hoard for the people we know. Prioritizing ourselves in love is political strategy, is survival.
From religious spaces to school to television shows to courts of law, we are socialized to seek and perpetuate private, even corporate, love. Your love is for one person, forever. You celebrate it with dying flowers and diamonds. The largest celebration of your life is committing to that person. Your family and friends celebrate you with dishes and a juicer. You need an income to love. If something doesn’t work out with your love, you pay a lot of money to divide your lives, generally not telling people much unless it’s a soap opera dramatic ending. This way of approaching love strangles all the good out of it.
What we need right now is a radical, global love that grows from deep within us to encompass all life.
i was also honored to reflect on the afrofuturist elements of Beyoncé’s grammy performance last sunday.
Beyonce’s Grammy Performance Was a Gilded Afrofuturist Dream
an excerpt:
I want to close with a moment of reverence for the exquisite symbology of healing that is Beyoncé in the last moment of the performance. After the last woman, a white woman, surrenders to her (which, in most parallel universes, would have foreshadowed her inevitable slaying of the awards)—we are left with Beyoncé, timeless and holy, face to face with the camera, her full mother-breasts gleaming, her nails sharp enough to protect against any who would harm her family, her face that of a woman who has learned the sacred witchcraft of healing, who has grown a universe in the landscape of her broken heart.
This performance is, like the best black speculative work, a spell we cast for a liberated, abundant black future. The healing we need will require the creative abundance of so many black women stepping into our wholeness.
i wanted to offer a psa for haters specifically, because i heard round the way that other people have encountered haters who still struggle to feel what Beyoncé is offering up as an artist. it appears that She keeps growing, but Her critics don’t. the knee jerk reactions range from bitter to misogynistic to reductive to outdated to obsessive. as always, i wonder: if Her work doesn’t do it for you, if you can’t respect Her art or Her hustle, why can’t you keep your eyes off of Her, or keep Her name out your mouth? your attention is in your control…isn’t it? mine is – i don’t give it to anything that isn’t worthy of it. which means that in addition to my revolutionary work, and my creative pleasure magic work, i give as much of it as i can to black women artists who delight me with their growth and their success in current conditions – success that creates more room for futures where we all get to determine our success beyond the matrix. so i give my attention to Her, gleefully, because She earns it with Her transformative life, learning, giving and abundant work. perhaps next time you feel moved to critique Her winning, you can pour that energy into doing something impressive with your own miraculous life? mkay, kizzzzzes.