
This post will probable take you 10 minutes to read.
But it will have taken me forever to write.
There’s no shortage of stuff to talk about. No shortage of things that intrigue me, inspire me, challenge me, or otherwise motivate me to think “I should blog about that.” And in the past I would. 2016 Natasha was ALL UP in them blogging shenanigans. I blogged across multiple platforms, video and literary, some of which I had more creative control over than others. I enjoyed getting to test my voice out in different arenas and under the guidance & mentorship of different people. I enjoyed the conversations with readers that would follow after I would post. I learned lots. Then came a little bit of professional burnout, a cross country move, and a call to be still. To not open up again until I felt ready to. And that was fine.
That was a call I honored, until I felt led to open up again in late 2017. That’s when I started the Patreon where I’ve been sharing blog posts, coloring pages & musical affirmations for the last two years. I felt like at that time I really needed to start being master of my own narrative, while still being accountable to that internal need to create and be seen doing so. I’ve interrogated that need to be seen before, in “My Horizons: the Creation of a Loop Based Musical Affirmation” and I’ve frequently alluded to it in my Patreon, that being witnessed has for a long time served as a motivator for my creative endeavors. It’s not that I’m incapable of creating without an audience (in fact some of my most affirming creative experiences have occurred while NOT being witnessed), but whenever I’m in a creative rut, one of my historical go-to’s for reinvigorating that is to sign myself up for something public. To “get back out there” as it were. Because to do so, to be seen, means I have to prepare something, and the act of preparing has always contained something important to me, even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Until one day I did.
I was listening to a Podcast I recently came upon called “Dem Black Mamas” and one of the hosts (a Black Mother, as the title of the Podcast suggests), was discussing a prompt she sometimes gives to people she counsels who feel like they’re in a rut for any reason. She asks her session participants to journal a single paragraph about what motivates them, or what they feel their purpose is. Then, after they’ve reached a place of natural conclusion with that, she asks them to highlight the one sentence in the paragraph they’ve written that they feel is the most crucial or salient message of the paragraph. Then, out of that sentence, she asks them to circle a single word or short phrase.
I decided to take myself on this little journey and in the end the word I ended up highlighting was “amplification.”
Amplification of marginalized voices and ideas is a major component in my creative work, professional environments, and just life in general. It’s part of what drives me towards community engagement in my research and teaching. I LOVE engaging with people, with their thoughts and processes, integrating the results into all new processes, and then sharing those results with others, to see where the ideas go next. I LIVE for those moments when I get to rabbit hole deep into a concept in conversation with another human being, and see their voices realized and their sense of love for themselves and their communities deepen.
But here’s the thing, it can be really easy to lose one’s sense of self in the amplification process. I did a TEDx talk back when I was living in North Dakota that held strongly to the theme of “Being an Amplifier,” and quite honestly the methodology I describe in there for engaging in challenging conversations is straight up exhausting, among other things. If I had that talk to do again today I’d do it much differently. Because the risk in simply advocating for amplification with little to no other context for accountability other than “advocate for people, dammit!” is that you may well end up just elevating yourself as the “one who amplifies” in a way that divorces you from the very communities you’re seeking to uplift, even if those are communities to which you belong, which ultimately causes more harm than good.
So as I marinated in the word I’d highlighted I knew that “amplification” alone wasn’t the thing, couldn’t be the thing. Amplification as a concept is a bit of a conundrum for a person seeking to find purpose. Amplification, on the surface, is a result. But there’s a whole process leading up to it that is where I think my lifeforce really finds its fire. It’s the digging in silence, finding like-minded people, and then stepping up to collaboratively build conceptual frameworks and creative playgrounds for realizing the world we want to see.
In sharing this with my spouse, his response was “I think the word you’re looking for is synergy. But not like the buzz word it’s become, like the literal definition of synergy.”
Synergy. “The interaction or cooperation of two or more agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects” (thank you dictionary.com). YES.
THAT’S why blogging isn’t really doing it much for me these days. Blogging is a form of amplification that has its place and value in the world, and it has served a valuable place in my life for working through my thoughts and sharing them in a way that others might find meaningful, but the work up front is an entirely solitary process, not particularly synergistic. At least not in the collaborative, human level that feeds me most.
So, I’m trying something new here on my Patreon and beyond. It’s a bit of a throwback to the video blogs I used to do a few years back, but with a little twist: I’m going to be filming myself not just talking to a camera, but talking with and making art with other people.
I’m calling it “Black Creative Healing,” and will be focusing this effort on Black/African Diasporic individuals who use creativity as a form of healing. I’m choosing to focus on Blackness because I want to, honestly. I’ve made plenty of appeals to Whiteness and multiculturalism in general. No one can say that I haven’t. Hell that was most of my blogging focus from 2012–2016. But that isn’t to say that White folks or those from other racial backgrounds won’t enjoy this series — just as anyone can enjoy eating at a Jamaican restaurant, anyone can enjoy the content of Black Creative Healing, it will just be a very particular type of cuisine on the menu. Black Creativity and Black Healing will be the centers of attention. And that’s that on that.
My conversation partners will be drawn from the creative fields of art, music, dance and drama, but they may also come from traditional healing or spiritual practices that utilize creative ways of thinking to solve problems. Creativity isn’t in itself only bound to art. Creativity is life. And I hope to celebrate it with this series, in all its forms, while engaging directly with people making a more just, equitable, and expansive world a reality.
The filming of conversations and art making has already begun, and our first official interview video will drop on Youtube 11/11/2019. I’ve also got an Instagram for “Black Creative Healing” that I previously had set to private and shared only with members of my Patreon until this point, but the moment I hit send on this it’ll all be public.
Interested in joining me in conversation? Hit me up a the email address I’ll be using for this project: BlackCreativeHealing(at)Gmail(dot)com. That’s another choice I’m making to consciously give myself safe space within and beyond this project. This won’t (and can’t) be all about me personally, but I won’t allow myself to become lost in it either. The “me” that is fed by this will be part of this process, as holistically (but also as safely) as possible. What exactly that will look like over time I don’t yet know. I know I plan to keep up the Patreon in some form, and that Patrons will continue to get early access (some even exclusive access) to materials relating to this project before I share them publicly, because I appreciate the opportunity to workshop ideas in smaller spaces before they go wide. And who knows, as time goes on I may yet circle back to more traditional print forms of blogging in some way or other.
But I’m not making any decisions about that today.
I’m just gonna see where centering this newfound sense of synergy takes me for a while. And for now, you’re welcome to come along, if you’d like. And if not, that’s ok too. I have an abundance of engagement and collaboration — I’m truly blessed in that regard. I have no need to chase anyone in this process.
That said, I will absolutely revel in co-conspirators and fellow Creatrix who wish to join me on this little adventure. And I look forward to seeing what all can (and will!) be uncovered, unearthed, shared, torn apart, rebuilt and reborn again, as we ascend together!
