Full Of Madness Cat

[Garoa Wolff]

Thefirst thing I (Ismatu) do in this essay is give the work presented context. Why do I write this? What does it matter? What does the work of considering sanity (or the lack thereof) change about me?

Originally, when I planned the Revolutionary Healers series, I did so to contextualize the decision to practice mental healthcare for free. The works from my unwavering faith in the world I see coming compel my hands to do what I have been previously told is impossible. I spent the entire arch of my personal story dreaming aloud of healthcare for free, and was told by everyone Reasonable it was not possible. In part, I deliver this essay to argue that to negotiate Reasonability is to negotiate with terrorists.

Every decision I make propels me forward, shifts my timeline, grants me access to new and different modes of being. I am just as capable of world-making as you, as our neighbors, or our statesman in the ruling class. I study the work of people that came before to guide my steps forward in the decisions I make (that lead to the world my hands touch). Two foundational principles from the words of Che Guevara:

My initial machinations for the Revolutionary Healers series were essentially, show your work, ismatu. If I wanted to expand into space the way I dream of doing, if I want my ripple effects to disturb the placid lake of Reasonable Possibility, I must then do something outside what I have been told is Rational. I received feedback which called various words for crazy: manic. Deranged. Self-harming.

Thus, the context that this essay comes to you, the reader, from makes itself known. I feel nothing but unconditional peace. Revolutionary work (such as free medical care) will always, always, seem crazy in these iterations of Possibility.

Questions for your reading and my writing consideration: What is Reason? What is unReason? What kinds of madness are there? Which madness(es) calls to us? Why is it so important that we reject the lens of the current world-markers when thinking about what freedom will actually cost us?

[a note from the editor: One day, I will write an essay about post-humanism, because to be Human in this world is to be white and wealthy. Today is not the day.] So then what kind of unReason is the desire for revolution? Passion or fantasy?

Psychosocial Madness: radical deviation from the normal within a given psychosocial milieu. Any person or practice that perplexes and vexes the psycho-normative status quo is liable to be labeled crazy. Psychosocial madness is one where an individual person (or a group of people) deviating from the status quo is policed by the collective, who legitimize themselves not through elite education or a degree of expertise, but from the Reasonable understanding that they are within correct and polite society. Individually felt, communally-policed.

The month of October has seen death live-televised in ways that we (US-Americans and others of us living in imperial cores) do not personally understand. We do not live in circumstances where we cannot hide the dead.

Hello and welcome to threadings., the newsletter and podcast where we consider the bits of my politic that stitch me together like a patchwork quilt. Today, I am bound together at the seams by the thought of a new world//what it might cost us//what we stand to gain. I write to you bereaved from watching the avalanches of death manufactured by the United States, via their bloodchildren (the United Nations, the so-called state of Israel, the existence of the US Dollar, and more). I am bereaved from the war in Sudan, knowing that a war of similar groundings burned my grandmother\u2019s home to the ground. I write to you feeling grief bloom in my bones.

The next thing I will do in this essay is move through the chosen text: How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind\u2019s chapter one, \u201CMad is a Place\u201D written by La Marr Jurelle Bruce. I move through this text with reverence to revolutionary thought, intent, and action as I know them.

And the third thing we (those reading, writing, watching) will do together is consider what it means lay down our sane minds as we move towards means of world-making. Because: there is a world coming after this one. I consider it inevitable. Not \u201Cwishful thinking,\u201D not the idealism or hubris of being youg\u2014 a new world is coming like the dawn. It\u2019s like a baby being born. It\u2019s inevitable. Capitalism is crumbling around us; the world that comes after this one is up to us. But something is coming.

At the top of this essay, I remind us all: to call for revolution is to call for death. There is no iteration of Western, sanitized Reason that will co-sign the destruction of itself\u2014 the system that keeps us at the mercy of our extractors. Death makes the ground fertile for life, as per the design of nature.

So I do not consider revolution or world-making as a young person because I romanticize war\u2014 once again, I cannot stress enough, to call for revolution is to call for death. I consider revolutionary theory and praxis because I prepare for when war comes to my door, as it must eventually when you live in a country whose the largest asset and most lucrative export is the US Military. Or when you are from a country that is considered \u201Cwar-torn\u201D as foreign powers quietly ransack the diamonds and gold in droves. And. Beyond surviving the violences of slavery-backed capitalism, I consider world-making to be universally-accessible work. We currently wade through a world order born from the ideations of extractive, war-mongering, white anglo-saxon slave-owners. Terrorists. Why would I allow them to tell me what is possible?

So then, in my endeavors to be the person I dream of being in as real a time, I decided to practice for free and study in public. [Editor\u2019s note: if you\u2019re new here, I have my master\u2019s in clinical social work and a concentration in health administration and policy. Dissemination of accessible healthcare, in this case mental healthcare, is kinda my jam and jelly.] The announcement came after months of ruminating, of feeling unsatisfied, of considering the financial precarity, attempting to charge (poorly) and finding that I had no other choice but to find a way to provide my works for free. Work done for the benefit of the community needs to be accessible to the community at large; all cost is a barrier; cost eradicated. Done.

From the text: Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly. It might send you staggering across asylum hallways, heckled by disembodied voices\u2014 or shimmying over spotlight stages, being greeting by loving applause. It might find you freewheeling through fever dreams, then marching towards freedom dreams, then scrambling from sleep, with blood and stars in your eyes, the whole world a waking dream. But for now, we wade through a liquid void, among ominous ships, where this study begins.

I consider How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity mandatory for world-building praxis. When discussing revolution, we think about violence first. We think about [joke about, are tempted by] the burning and the bombing and the tearing down\u2014and yes. Duh. All of that is necessary [and I do repeat: necessary] for the purpose of having a new world stand on top of fertile ground. Death makes the ground fertile by the design of nature. \u201CCivilians\u201D become martyrs because we, the world-makers left behind, do not allow them to die for the gain of colonizers. What do we want? What do we build? Do we remember how crucial the work of honing our imagination is as part of revolutionary theory? Thus: How to Go Mad is a study of the madness present in Black radical creativity. Without creativity, the means to think up world makings we cannot yet see/taste/touch, what do we take up arms for? What do you burn and fight and kill for if you cannot taste the sweet plum of freedom bursting on the other side? Revolution is to call for death you cannot hide for the sweet plums ripened on the other side. The first and most necessary death of revolution is the death of all semblance of Reason.

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