Hello and welcome to Blueprints. Grab your tea, I am having rooibos with fruits and florals. The only thing that would make this better is a bit of roasted almond. Ugh. A negro can dream.
The written out version of this is more concise– I go off a bit at the mouth in the video, so. Either way… spittin’.
So. I have a book that’s… been on the way, quite honestly. I don’t think I have ever felt this much fear paralysis before— as we’ve discussed, I am never in fear of my failure. Only my success, because then the stakes get higher. But that particular art-making, like these pimples, has come to a head this week.
Book Rollout. Social Income (and social media advertising). Social Contract.
BOOK ROLLOUT:
By the time you see this published, this should be obvious but: I am publishing the book in episodic installments as an audio project, because if the internet has taught me anything, it is that people have an automatic, knee-jerk response to hearing they have to read something. A large part of my audience shuts off their listening ears, such that people still do not know that I have a podcast where audio versions of all the essays live (and that has been the case from Day One, Essay One). I am dyslexic and I take reading disability (or simply an auditory preference) quite seriously. What I have failed to account for in previous art-making was the trauma that people can have associated with reading; that off-button response can be stress-induced. The same does not seem to exist when I say something is available for listening or for watching— so I am releasing the audio book first. This gives me time to familiarize everyone participating with the themes and thesis of the text while also (blessedly) avoiding spoilers.
SOCIAL INCOME X ISMATU GWENDOLYN X SIERRA LEONEAN ASSOCIATION OF EBOLA SURVIVORS
This is the collab of the century and I have not done right by it. Man, so much of committing to excellent work is dealing with pain that requires your growth. You would think I could field this better as a trained therapist, but no— I buckled under the same old wounds with the same mal-adapative coping systems. 2024 was a year where I regretted it every single time I engaged in mind-altering substances, but it was my immediate response once I came across pain I did not feel equipped to navigate through. In truth: my initial project, oral tradition research for my thesis, traumatized me in the clinical sense. Trauma is when your body, specifically your nervous system and your processing capabilities, experience overwhelm. Every single human alive has trauma; it’s unavoidable in the course of learning and growing, thus I do not understand trauma as a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. I also think it’s easier to understate trauma than it is to overstate…. but that’s another essay.
That first go around with them, when I was twenty years old and sitting in rooms with twenty individuals who had their lives forever altered by the contraction of a virus— that alone was enough to renegotiate my ideas of sanity. The kinds of grief they showed me were multitudinal– I didn’t even know I had a heart like that to break. But then (1) Covid began killing people left and right across the world and (2) mass Covid denial allowed the slaughter to continue without much fanfare. I know I say this a lot but: we literally hid the dead away on cruise ships. In meat warehouses. I entered into a permanent after. I did not recover. And, due to a change in profession and more time than I anticipated spent at home with my biological family, I was drinking alcohol more often than not.
I experienced a similar kind of psychotic breakdown last year, when I did not slow down to feel the grief of Baba passing and my mother’s cancer diagnosis, and I kept coming up on dead ends when fundraising for what is, ostensibly, the coolest shit I have ever done on the internet. And I polled people up and down as to why we did not care. I thought that we could extrapolate by now. Are we just overwhelmed? Have I asked for too much? What’s going on? And many soliloquized in my comments about how hard it was for everyone right now, how they’re just at capacity, how there are so many bad things going on in the world that they don’t know where to look. I sympathized. I reassessed. I tried not to smoke. I failed. And then October came around, I made a video detailing that I was still operating on a free-basis for mental health services, and everyone just… the money rolled in. Donations I barely asked for. It wasn’t even an ask video, it was just for updates. Yet, I received tens of thousands of dollars.
When that happens, I do just directly fulfill emergency aid requests that have been sitting in my inbox for a while. I don’t publicize this for reasons I feel like are obvious. So I’m sitting here, redistributing aid, breaking off coins to every aid request I see on Twitter or whatever and going… people do care. They absolutely have enough care to send you, ismatu, two dollars. They just don’t care about what you care about. Nameless, faceless Africans are always just… nameless, faceless Africans.
Tried not to drink. Tried not to smoke. Was more successful than I had been in previous iterations. The sobriety amongst the pain and surprise helped unearth how much previous trauma I straight up had not dealt with: mass death, being told I was insane, being desperate to help, being told I was insane (but with kinder, softer words, like idealistic and altruistic to a fault). **I have never considered myself altruistic. I think I see the problems of the world for what they are: collective and an immediate emergency. And despite that, despite my laying out ground work for the past year for understanding mutual aid, understanding we should support one another— especially those doing movement work for free— believing that one dollar was way more than none… everything still comes down to social media marketing. I am reminded of how disturbed I was during the STOP KONY viral campaign. I am reminded of how disturbed I am witnessing the FREE TIBET syndrome be taken up again, under the banner of a liberated Palestine. Israel slaughters people in the West Bank, but we do not discuss anymore because a ceasefire has been reached in the Gaza strip. I remembered why I stopped being sober; so much pain.
Yet still: I made promises I intended to keep. So how do I intend to raise this money? For the short and for the long-term?
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING + COMMUNITY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
I needed progress on this project— by far, the easiest thing to do is just to make advertisements. I wrote a letter about this to the Social Income team last summer. See below:
By now, I am very good at social media marketing. I understand the buying funnel and the trigger words and phrases to use to get people to donate to my project. That’s how I funded farming initiatives the first time around so quickly; I used (morally questionable) marketing tactics to get those funds raised as quickly as I could. I put footage and videos of babies and children to the front. I made sure to emphasize that these people were/are not just nameless, faceless Africans, but in fact my own family members. I tied my social capital to this group of people very intimately to ensure success. It’s easy and it’s cheap. That is a great way to solidify one’s status as a celebrity “activist.” It is not a great way to create lasting change in the hearts and minds of those witnessing.
In “Information Anarchy: The Case Against Sponsorships,” one of my favorite essays to date, I assert that I will not use my word to sell a product. While not specifically stated, I think this also applies to advertising of any sort. I don’t want the reason that you donate to a fundraiser, or become a paid subscriber, or support an initiative to be because ismatu told you so. I want it to be because you understand the mission, you understand the vision, and you understand that what we spend our money on is a direct reflection of our values. I want there to be a conscious moment of reflection in giving me the power to world-make (be it in your time, your attention, or your fiat currency— all of this is capital I can use to shape the world I have accessible to me). I think it is a disingenuous thing to do with my power of visibility, and with the trust that you all have given to me, to push buttons of sympathy or guilt or what have you in order to squeeze some dollars from you. That… feel exploitative. It is exploitative.
Which means that I, public scholar, am tasked with creating an accessible online curriculum capable of teaching people what it means to act in solidarity with those you may never meet (because that is a crucial skill set to surviving the coming world. I am tasked with teaching you how to extrapolate: even though they were not in my exact circumstance, where can I apply the successes of their systems-making in my own systems?
This is the harder job by a lot! It’s giving me stress pimples! Oh my gosh!
But: it’s also pushing me past what I originally conceived of as possible. See the following:
Ismatu Gwendolyn’s Updated Social Contract
- instead of a traditional print run with a traditional book publisher (which I was offered at multiple points), Ismatu Gwendolyn retains the full rights to the artistic work(s) they have stewarded and breathed life into. Small Prophecies will be known to the public in the following ways:
- as an audio project in four separate steaming albums, made free everywhere you are able to stream audio projects (including but not limited to: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Soundcloud, etc.). The debut in audio format helps to invite the layperson to engage with artforms that come with structural barriers to access or comprehension (engaging with long-form text, reading poetry, or navigating learning/reading disabilities).
- the E-Book and PDF versions, which requires no overhead costs for distribution, will be made available for free. This ensures that the book is accessible worldwide, including in places where any amount of United States dollars for a book is an untenable expense. This also includes those of us in the imperial cores who would love to partake, but cannot spare the money to buy a copy.
- Ismatu Gwendolyn, the transcriber of the work Small Prophecies, does not consider themselves to have sole proprietary ownership over the work. This is because the work was built collaboratively, through many years of life experiences with many different teachers. As a result, the print copies (which do require overhead) will garner a profit (typically known as royalties). Ismatu Gwendolyn will keep 0% of royalties for personal use. 100% of royalties will go towards building out the Universal Basic Income program in Sierra Leone for Ebola Survivors, the central population within the book’s narratives. This allows for a stream of income for people otherwise too disabled to work. Then, should funds raised from book sales exceed $400,000, 50% of the royalties thereafter shall provide continued support to agriculture efforts in Sierra Leone, helping to alleviate the chronic food insecurity that Ebola survivors (and many others) face every day. Ismatu Gwendolyn has been working on a rice harvest since December 2022. In 2025, that first harvest will come; there are talks to expand to corn and other kinds of produce.
- The Small Prophecies Art Book, including photographs and original artworks from Ismatu Gwendolyn, shall be sold for “profit" as well. Ismatu Gwendolyn shall keep none of the proceeds from this book for personal use. Instead, these monies will go towards [redacted for now! But I have large dreams! Big plans!]
Cool. Community intellectual property.
Sorry for my delay! This is (obviously) not the last time you’ll hear about small prophecies on Blueprints— I’ll be providing pretty regular updates.
hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.
ismatu g.
A Post script: sooooo I didn’t upload part one. In short, I finished everything, listened to it again and was like… this needs music. So I am soliciting jazz artists to make a score.