Survival Takes A Wild Imagination

(a slight break in revolutionary programming to bring you my latest book)

by Tessa Forrest of Subliming.jpg

Last week, on October 17th, Survival Takes A Wild Imagination came out.

It was also the day the Al-Alhi Hospital in Gaza was bombed… so you know, I didn’t really give a fuck about my book coming out truthfully.

Now, a week later, I feel more steady in my rage and sadness, and I’m holding the oddity of making art during times like these. It’s powerful how what you make can add to the chorus of truth, how it can be resonant and tectonic and how it can (and it must) speak to this.

I’ve kept thinking what a title for this time. What a strange spell, what a strange reminder — don’t forget, survival takes a wild imagination.

Still, as I put the prayer of this book out, my daily prayers are for the children of Gaza who are being obliterated with bombs as we speak. The death toll, for just children, is over 2,000. But, the total death toll is over 5,000 people.

So all I can think about are these tiny little children, hearing grenade after grenade, fearing for their lives. All the bodies of the children that are being recovered, with their names written with markers on their limbs so people can identify them when they die. Can you imagine being a child and preparing for death? Who speaks for these dead? What happens to these children if they live? Will they ever be able to dream? Will they ever hear anything other than a warplane? Or will the horrors of their lives never offer them salvation… I grieve for them every day, I grieve them. In the same breath, I also mourn Samantha Woll, the Jewish leader, who seemed to be such a kind and courageous human. I grieve her death just as I grieve all the deaths of innocent civilians at this time.

I pray for their deliverance, and I ask God for resolutions. All I know is we have to keep speaking about Palestine, about genocide, to make people act and speak out too. This has to end, and I do think it’s a collective effort. Liberation is for all of us. We owe it to ourselves to evolve.

And, not so surprisingly, this book of mine is about all of this.

So, one piece of offering I can add is if you feel powerless to speak make your own art, write your own thoughts, challenge systems, and fight harder. We need to remember this is a long fight and that we need re-envisioning from everyone. So what does your utopia look like, where we are all equal? Here’s a prompt: In the future, what would it feel like for Palestine to be free? Write that down.

In the spirit of survival and imagination, I’m giving away 34 of these above posters designed by my brilliant dearest friend Tessa Forrest of Subliming.jpg (who just designed this beautiful Marwan Makhoul poem)— 25 are for Domestic/Canada orders I believe and 8 are for international folks. Here’s all the information to enter! It says its only till the 17th, but we extended it. I got one of these posters myself and it’s one of my favorite prints I’ve ever seen.

May you read the book, share the book, but above all may you believe liberation is possible for all. We are all responsible for the collective dreaming of our future. One where we are all, including Palestine, free.