One of the first love letters I ever wrote was to my 6th grade crush. It was a 2 page poem in coupled rhyme to a white boy in the grade above me. He played electric guitar in the school talent show and listened to AC/DC, so I myself ventured into my own rabbit hole of classic rock consumption. Despite coming out of the crush somewhat heartbroken and with a Tina Belcher-esque air of tween boy craze, I also developed a newfound appreciation for the classic rock radio station and a secret love for “Patience” by Guns’N Roses ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
I have failed at both giving and receiving love on a few different occasions, and while the full unpacking of these dynamics will have to wait for a much later day, I find myself currently reflecting on the gesture of a love letter -- experiential records of affection between people:
physical letters on paper sealed in an envelope
curated song playlists or mixtapes
the squeeze of a hand underneath the table
paypal and venmo notifications
memes
community fridges and curbside libraries that are routinely re-stocked out of the willpower and collaboration of neighbors
infographics on your Instagram story reminding you of election deadlines
guided breathing meditations
The relationship between your fingers and scalp as you braid strands of hair from roots to end
In Portuguese, we use the word gostoso in three different instances :
describing tasty food (this cheese arepa with plantains is very gostoso)
describing someone who is physically attractive (that person reading a book over there is gostoso)
describing a pleasurable sensation or experience (Sleeping in and ignoring my work related emails for a full 24 hours is gostoso)
Image description : cheese, plantains, and beans on a arepa with pink dressing and a black fork on top of a plain orange background.
The third and final iteration of gostoso is the hardest one to translate into English, but it summarizes my thoughts around love letters pretty well: Finding a love letter in your mailbox is gostoso. Opening it in the privacy of your own room after a long day is gostoso. Writing a letter back when the feeling is mutual is gostoso. The anticipation of your letter arriving to the reader is also gostoso.
With the exception of the 6th grade poem and my high school chat history on AIM, my written proclamations of love and care for others in romantic relationships have strayed away from grand gestures for the most part. My love letters have always read more like mundane stories. In retrospect, they have also reflected the love that I have either shown or lacked towards myself:
💌 I once wrote a love letter to someone I didn’t know how to love anymore, and that lack of love really showed in my ability to convince them of comfort and routine in my words. That false commitment to longevity aligned quite strongly with my inner fear of change and control within my own world.
💌 I once wrote a love letter to someone I longed for deeply but couldn’t be with for many reasons. That longing reflected the loneliness and alienation I felt towards myself. I wrote about dreams and projections, but none of these dreams held a real space for me to develop a sense of trust in my own decisions and needs.
💌 I once wrote a love letter to someone during my lunch break on a job that made me feel pretty drained. The scribble of my words were as brief as the work break and as free flowing as the newly forming relationship. This letter held an energy and excitement that I did not hold for my job title. Needless to say the relationship has outlived the job.
Image description : a hand holding a rectangular photograph of a white building with columns and statues. The hand and photograph extend out of a window overlooking apartment buildings.
As I’ve come to develop a more stable and healthier understanding around the process of love itself, so too has my desire and capacity to better engage with gestures and signals of affection--not just in the work I share for romantic relationships, but also platonically and individually.
accepting periods of silence and delay in communication as moments of care
artwork that doesn’t rely fully on grief and educating to justify its narratives and right to existence.
messages that don’t push to have the final word
More on this another day….
Installation view of Arthur Jafa: Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.
Image description: Barack Obama wears a black suit and purple tie while singing into a church podium. Behind him are smiling black reverends in matching purple garments.
Watching :
Bacurau (2019) , Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
Image description : A large, racially diverse crowd marches downhill in a funeral procession during the day. The procession is led by a man playing guitar and two people holding the front of a coffin.
Bacurau is a 2-hour, genre bending, Latin-Futurist Spaghetti Western (?) set in the northeastern backcountry of Brazil. Merging the past, present, and future all at once, Bacurau creates a highly layered portrait of community resistance and what it means to find courage and freedom under white supremacist systems of control. Here, we see a village that exists outside the societal confines of the state; comprised of black, indigenous and queer residents, all who call Bacurau home share a deep understanding and acceptance of their roots. Ancestral history can never be forgotten when envisioning a safer future.
Image description : a close-up image of a hand with dark brown skin. The hand is dropping a small round object into an open mouth showing two front teeth and a tongue.
On a deeper level, Bacurau is also a love letter to the Brazilian people -- not only in its representation of the country’s rural non-white populations, but also in its case studies for community care, anti-police systems of justice, and the need to turn inward in achieving freedom. Brazil has often been a society that turns to Europe and the United States for approval and solutions on how to run its own people. This film sheds a spotlight on the current insecurity of building a collective and anti-racist national identity. As a result, it also grants us all permission to envision beautiful, alternative futures that push beyond aversions to unity.
Image description : A middle aged man and woman with exposed shoulders look down upon the camera behind a blue and cloudy sky.
I could teach a whole class on how Bacurau merges love, rage, and grief as catalysts for protest and survival. This is required watching for the times we live in. (Content warning for graphic violence).
Watch the trailer for Bacurau here.
Window Swapping :
My wonderful friend Emma sent me this cool link to a site called Window Swap - a browser window that randomly generates an image or video from the view of someone else’s IRL window. I’ve been to Japan, Amsterdam, and the midwest so far. You can also submit images from your own window to the site. Great for when you want to explore some place new without leaving your desk.
Image description : a window view overlooking houses, green hills, and the ocean.
Learning :
I mentioned the Black School in a previous newsletter and wanted to follow up with some other institutions that are doing good work around alternative learning spaces. This list will surely keep growing in the coming months.
Dark Study - Dark Study is a refuge for students dealing with the untenability of higher education and the fallout of neoliberalism. We are committed to building a learning program that addresses society point-blank for what it is. Registration for classes coming soon; donate here
Afrotectopia’s Imaginarium - IMAGINARIUM is a weekly collective conversation with the Afrotectopia community + public on designing healthy Black futures through theory, practice, and imagination. Occurring every Tuesday evening from 6-8pm EST from August 4th to September 1st. This space is exclusively for Black/Pan-African participants. Checkout the syllabus with free readings.
Activation Residency - Activation is a Black trans led artist residency and cooperative fund. Their current initiative, Farming Futurity is 15 acres of land in the South Catskills of Upstate, New York made up of an artist residency, permaculture farm, and healing space providing short term residencies for community members eager to explore transformative justice healing arts as a liberatory tool; donate here.
Heckler Assembly - HEKLER ASSEMBLY is a transnational space for cultural workers to share, discuss and collectively imagine new ways of instituting based on the principles of self-organizing, community care, critical thinking, political education, and healing as commons. Follow them online for updates on reading groups or to propose a collaboration.
What new spaces are you seeing formed right now as we reckon with better alternatives to support and care for learners ? Send me a line over email to share or just to say hello.