The Time of the Artist: A Love Story
What happens if we use a different definition of revolution that is centered on the fire of love? What would you create and why?
NOTE: This is the beginning of a keynote I gave at the National Guild of Community Arts Education national conference April 11, 2024. The full talk is available on my Patreon.
I want to tell you a story about love.
Not in that Nicholas Spark montage love story kind of way.
No.
This story is about love as an activator, an element, the fire we need to ignite us into action.
And that action is creation.
Creating new worlds that allow us to fully LIVE and not just survive in landscapes and soundscapes that claim to be universal, democratic, liberatory, and free for all ...but that “all” is highly defined and confined for a select few.
Cause we need different templates to draw from. So we must be the ones to create our own definitions and stories of what liberation and freedom mean for us, individually and collectively. Otherwise we end up recreating what is, and that is a colonial imagination that only knows extraction and destruction as its basis of life.
And why would we want to keep living and recreating in and through THAT imagination?
This means we need people who can help others see themselves as creators. As creatives. As artists, having the ability to take up space and create the realities and worlds we say we want to live in, and know won’t be possible until we enact them.
So we must dream them first - and bring those dreams into reality.
If you know any astrology, this is like bringing the dreams of the 12th house into the mundane of the 6th house.
And if you know anything about the 12th house, it is a house of the hidden and where our fears reside, but it is also where creativity lives as well.
So we must face our fears as part of the process of creating, which is why the dreamscape becomes an important place to do the both/and.
Because it is in our dreamscapes that we can connect to different times, realities, and our humanity. Helping us break the “supposed to’s” that keep us confined to reproducing what is in order to figure out our possibilities of what can be.
We are in a time of creation AND destruction. And we all are being tasked with weaving together various ways of knowing and being through different modalities as we also see the collapse of structures and systems that never allowed us to embody the essence of our humanity as creators of our own destinies in the first place.
Therefore, this is the time of ART and the ARTIST. Activated by the fire of love within us that has been ignited due to the death and destruction too many of us have had to see, bear, feel, live through.
So all we CAN do is create.
Because, change is here, accompanying creativity as the energies are siblings knocking at the door, busting it open at the seams. Calling for us to look around and ask whose realities we believe and whose realities do we want to live in.
Because to believe your reality means you have invited truth to the table and truth is what allows you to fully embody your materiality and dare to live.
To breathe.
To truly know the truth that we are the creators of the realities we inhabit.
If everything is socially constructed then we must construct the societies we want.
THIS is love - the audacity to know and believe that only we can save us so might as well make it beautiful.
But what are we saving?
Who is the “us” being saved?
And, where are we going?
Full essay is available on my Patreon.
Latest Abolitionist Dreamscapes Podcast Episode: The Crossroads of the ATRs w/ Alafia Stewart
If you didn’t know I have a podcast (and patreon of the same name)! Abolitionist Dreamscapes is a space where I talk about breaking from ideas of just surviving and dreaming of ways we can really live.
Following the theme of revolutionary love and working with the spirit of change, my latest episode delves into the relationship we have with the spiritual realm in African Traditional Religions (ATRs) and what needs to change in order for us to actualize our humanity in the present.
To get into this and more in conversation with Alafia Stewart. An Oakland California native, Alafia is a social activist, DEI consultant, and ATR Spiritual safety educator. When not community organizing, she can most likely be found singing karaoke and/or trying all the amazing food anywhere she lands. Alafia lives by the motto: “2+2=4, but so does 3+1. There is almost never just one way to solve a problem so diversity in perspective is vital.” Here we are talking about what it means to be "in" an African Traditional Religion (ATR) as Black folks and how not to get got in these spiritual streets.
Have a listen, let me know what you think, and catch up on past episodes!
“Believe Your Reality” Black Women’s Leadership Cohort Program Starting May 6th!
Enrollment is open for my “Believe Your Reality” program for Black women leaders at a crossroads in their life, professional and/or personally, and want to root in a different strategy of living going forward that centers their humanity.
More information can be found below AND on my website. Space is limited to 6 only, so sign up today!
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My name is Dr. Nicole Truesdell and I am an innovative Independent Organizational and Educational Consultant, Executive Coach, Astrologer, Speaker, and the Founder of Abolitionist Dreamscapes, an imaginative and creative space to explore our humanity outside socio-political identities.
My books are open for astrology readings and you can now book and pay directly online! I open a limited number of spots each month so if you do not see availability please check back in a couple of weeks.
I am also taking on new clients for the spring and summer for both coaching and consulting. All coaching options can also be considered professional development!
If you want to see what services would be best for you, schedule a 15 minute Discovery Call!
Please consider joining my Patreon for more - I go into various concepts there along with providing reflections and space for community gathering. It is a small but growing space, and I invite you to grow it with me.
For more of my thoughts on abolition, life, and what it means to be human as I navigate being a 40-something ex-academic starting my life over check out my Podcast “Abolitionist Dreamscapes” where I talk about these issues and more. I wrapped up Season 1 and will coming back at the beginning of February with Season 2, focusing on Rootwork, the ancestors, and dreaming of new ways to live.
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