somatic semantics 104

for those who wish to grow old, those who wish they were never born, and anyone who has been rehearsing their bravest breathing

hi hello,

welcome to the one hundred and fourth issue of somatic semantics.

i am excited to share an offer seven years (and really, in a truer sense, a lifetime) in the making: the clap back manifest(o) summer 2025 retreat – a nine-week personal excavation journey in service of fugitive¹ practice(s).

i am deepening what began as a durational workshop into a nine-week virtual retreat in order to create ease and spaciousness, both for myself and for everyone who will join me on this journey.

this offer is adapted to the shape of my (self) love and my communal care. it follows the rhythm of my sweet-blooded neurodivergent flesh suit, allowing for breath, stillness, and silence. it is an incantation – a rememory² – of a time and space in which i can hold and be held.

in sharing this offer, i invite you to speak a different world into existence, to engage in discursive, spiritual, and spatial travel toward (y)our desires.

the clap back manifest(o): summer 2025 retreat

where: zoom (online) with live captioning and recording

when: june 23, 2025 to august 20, 2025 | mondays and wednesdays from 12:00 to 13:30 eastern time

registration opens: may 12, 2025

registration closes: june 16, 2025

what: one syllabus + nine playlists + nine workshops + nine story circles

why

the clap back manifest(o) is for those who perform (invisible) emotional, psychological and spiritual labour within relational contexts that systematically appropriate and distort our cultural production.

rooted in an acknowledgement of racial capitalism³, manifest(o) invites us to consider what it would mean to (re)define the terms under which our labour (in its plurality) is (re)produced, (re)presented, archived and valued.

over the course of nine workshops, nine story circles, and nine sonic voyages, we interrogate self-definitions and notions of possibility to root ourselves in affirmative semantic structures. these structures provide scaffolding for relational contexts that honour our boundaries, needs, desires and aspirations while inviting honesty and ease into our daily practices.

who are you?

what do you need?

what do you want?

what are your demands?

the clap back manifest(o) is a space in which we respond to these questions with affirmations that result in the creation of personal manifestos. these manifestos make tangible the futures we are reaching for while clarifying necessary individual and collective steps toward them.

the people

manifest(o) is for hoes, healers, artists, intellectuals, organizers, auntxs, lovers, dreamers and schemers. this retreat is for those who wish to grow old, those who wish they were never born, and anyone who has been rehearsing their bravest breathing⁴.

"what's true, what's incredibly honest, is that the breaths one either chooses or is forced to take IS the practice" – denise shanté brown, the life-giving consequences of creative rest: a personal essay on reckoning with what happens to creative practice when choosing softness and slowness⁵

“what is our bravest breathing? what is our unapologetic action towards self-determination?” – alexis pauline gumbs, undrowned: black feminist lessons from marine mammals

the cadence

our 9-week journey begins as i share a syllabus (in pdf format) for our fugitive practice(s).

throughout the retreat, i facilitate weekly zoom workshops (mondays from 12:00pm to 13:30 eastern time) and zoom story circles (wednesdays from 12:00 to 13:30 eastern time) designed to welcome us back into ourselves as we excavate the raw materials with which we will co-create the futures we seek.

workshops begin with weekly meditations, which are followed by directed journaling. weekly story circles are a space to discuss how this work lands in our bodies and what ripples it creates throughout our care networks.

the collaborations

i am both grateful and excited to be collaborating with my beloveds digital polyglot and g l o w z i, two brilliant transdisciplinary artists who have joined me in building the world of manifest(o)’s summer 2025 retreat by crafting nine playlists to carry us through our weekly reflections.

digital polyglot and g l o w z i’s sonic voyages pulse with afrodiasporic rhythms, dancing us across the black atlantic, toward the curious intersection of memory and imagination.

the methodology

yes, and … also is a discursive experiment and a creative methodology. it is also the title of the 2018 self-directed residency during which i developed manifest(o).

yes, and … also, draws from theatrical improvisation and kimberlé crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality⁶ to root us in the following questions:

how can the confusion of a transitional moment serve as inspiration? how can a break or change in trajectory be understood as an opportunity? how can we welcome change while reaching for futures that honour contrasting desires? how can these dynamics shape the way we experience and subsequently remember the present?

intersectionality encourages us to be specific about the societal choices that (co)create converging power dynamics and thus shape our realities. improvisation encourages us to carry this specificity into the future — carefully tracing each step between where we are and where we wish to go.

the journey(s)

i offered the first iteration of manifest(o) in 2018 in the context of my self-directed residency at sbc gallery of contemporary art.

we gathered on the fifth floor of tiohtià:ke/mooniyang/montreal’s belgo building, many of us climbing five flights of stairs in the dark, through a power outage, to then sit in a candlelit circle as we shared the stories of our names, of those who named us, and of all the ways in which we carry ourselves and each other into the future. while i was grateful for this experience, i craved more time — wanting to delve deeper into our stories of be(com)ing, curious about the language that creates matter.

in time, through the ebb and flow of an ongoing global pandemic and of my own disability, i offered various iterations of manifest(o) as an online and in-person durational workshop.

later on, my experience within ayana zaire cotton’s winter 2024 seeda world retreat⁷ — a black feminist world building community — as well as the moments i shared with each manifest(o) cohort served as catalysts, expanding my imagination of what manifest(o) could be — to understand that this workshop was meant to be(come) a retreat.

this brings us to the present, to our summer 2025 manifest(o) retreat, an offer seven years in the making that will surely continue to be(come) more of itself through each iteration.

registration opens today!

visit my website to learn more about the clap back manifest(o) and join (y)our summer 2025 cohort.

“we now have an opportunity to see something with clarity, and the new awareness that emerges has the potential to catalyze a sharp break from the past, to draw a line between the current chapter of our life and the next one.” – moon omens, full moon in scorpio 2025: emotional alchemy

“and again, the theme is being bold and courageous and willing to take action towards the thing that’s going to set you free” – chani nicholas, astrology of the week ahead – week of may 5th, 2025: psychic deep-dives

i am ready to walk through the portal of today’s full moon in scorpio and i trust you will join me on the other side, where we will immerse ourselves in the honesty, curiosity, and intuition that our fugitive practice(s) require(s).

i leave you with fela kuti’s water no get enemy:

with love + light,

nènè

1. fugitivity as in marronage, as in stealing way, as in building a world otherwise while inhabiting one that seeks to destroy us, as in jazz, as in improvisation, as in remixing the raw materials of the present into the futures we require

2. “rememory as in recollecting and remembering as in reassembling the members of the body, the family, the population of the past.” — 'I wanted to carve out a world both culture specific and race-free': an essay by Toni Morrison

3. the notion of racial capitalism, as a globally structuring economic system, was developed by cedric j. robinson in his 1983 book, black marxism: the making of the black radical tradition.

4. in the opening lines of be fierce, the eighth chapter of alexis pauline gumbs’ undrowned: black feminist lessons from marine mammals, the author asks what we can learn from “marine mammals [who] live with graceful ferocity, navigating treacherous circumstances daily” before prompting us to consider what “our bravest breathing” might be.

5. denise shanté brown is a multidimensional designer, creative co-conspirator, and intuitive writer birthed from a lineage of poets, artists, teachers, community organizers, and caregivers. i met denise shanté during ayana zaire cotton's seeda world retreat and i've been blessed to be in dialogue with her ever since. i highly recommend her practice, infused with her notion of felt futures, to anyone who is committed to dreaming a world otherwise.

6. dr. kimberlé crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in her 1989 essay, demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. in this essay crenshaw argues that “because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account
cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which black women are subordinated.”

7. entering ayana zaire cotton's seeda school helped me feel that the soil was fertile, that my dreams could sprout, that my rhizomes were woven within a rich network of love and care. i felt held during each workshop and open studio as everyone created portals towards the most tender futures. this experience expanded my imagination of what my virtual practice could be(come) and planted seeds that eventually blossomed into this summer’s manifest(o) retreat. thank you ayana.