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Romancing the Revolution is a weekly virtual gathering centered on queerly intimate practices for liberation. It is a transformative space for learning how to be who we need. We do this through processing creative expression, authentic sharing, and critical reflection.
As I shared in this update on Substack, this is the natural next step toward doing my work as a meta philosophical performance artist in a way others can use.
It's one thing to study someone's work. It's another thing to progress and evolve beside them by participating in a process as it develops. By thinking, reflecting, and sharing together, this experience will inevitably shape your process and meaning-making, too.
Due to the nature of this experience container, it is crucial that all participants come with a strong foundation of self-awareness, emotional capacity, intellectual humility, and skillfulness to honor group dynamics while sharing space across difference. This is not an open forum for casual discussion about personal ideas or political opinions. It is an intentionally designed and facilitated space grounded in values of community, liberation, and praxis. If this resonates with your commitments and capacities, you are invited to join this uniquely powerful process.
Ready to join Romancing the Revolution?
We gather on Zoom every Sunday at 10:30am (MST) for an hour. You'll get a link for every Sunday in the month for which you register.
There is a built in sliding scale starting at $10 per month for my Buy Me a Coffee members. For non-members, access starts at $25 for the month.
Visit my shop on Buy Me a Coffee to register.
You Might Be Wondering...
What Do We Do at Romancing the Revolution?
One of the most valuable things we can do is share what we learn. I'm inviting you into my philifesophy and creative work in real-time. Sharing my real-life process will inform your real-life process. In the meantime, we'll be developing an epistemology of intimacy! (Don't worry. You don't need to know what that means.)
Please understand I'm not offering this as client-serving deliverable or consumer product. My intention is to share my work as I do it week to week from a place of creative abundance and a sincere desire to learn together. Yes, there is reciprocity in the process, but this is an extremely unique space of personal connection for a meta philosophical project. For that reason, boundaries and expectations must be respected. (See more on that below.)
What's So Romantic About It?
Honestly, a lot. I go into more depth here, but know this container is created and fueled by love, understood as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's healing, transformation, and liberation.
I share new pages that are personal, honest, and true, the sort of things I want to share when developing a deeper connection. Think of them as artifacts that capture a way of learning, too. They document a process of becoming, like a scrapbook of personal letters, love notes, journal entries, anecdotes, and helpful references.
And they are for you to have and use!
You can read them, print them, and keep them. Fill them with your own notes. I hope they inspire your learning along the way! Maybe the pages spark new ideas to share with your friends and loved ones. Or, perhaps you hold onto them until the timing is right to revisit, explore further, and go deeper.
Are We The Revolution?
Yeah, I hope so! Remember, you are part of a movement with a particular responsibility to do what you can, right where you are, with whatever you have. The everyday choices you make matter most. I hope what we learn together will inspire and shape how you approach your own projects.
Plus, it's revolutionary to learn with others outside of traditional academic institutions. It's revolutionary to connect and build community in intentional ways. In her book, Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks describes education as a practice of freedom. I agree. Is this a unique form of political education? Yes, likely, because the personal is political (as is the professional and philosophical). Romancing the Revolution is about doing philosophy in ways that illuminate corners within all aspects of our lives.
What Do You Mean, 'Queerly Intimate Practices'?
Romancing the Revolution is 'queerly' intimate in that it defies norms and dominating expectations around how people are "supposed" to build relationships and meaningfully connect with each other. In this space, we engage BIG THOUGHTS and DEEP FEELINGS.
I also mean 'queer' as in quality, like what is reflected in the work and wisdom of queer women of color over generations. bell hooks defined 'queer' as in "being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live."
When Audre Lorde describes the uses of the erotic as a source of power, she notes the political potential of deeply sharing with others (which is a human need). Echoing Gloria Anzaldúa on writing, engaging in practices "to become more intimate with myself and you" is a powerful way for all of us to get more free.
Setting Expectations
Registering a month at a time offers some structure to an inherently dynamic, fluid, and open-ended process. We may move slowly to deeply explore a theme for a few weeks. We might consider some self-contained stories. You can choose to participate at any time, but since this isn't a workshop series with previously developed content, I can't promise what we will cover in advance. It will be thoughtful, meaningful, and compelling for anyone who seeks to make meaning of our current realities, enjoys deeply connecting, and is committed to moving with love. If that sounds like you, I am confident you'll feel fed with much to incorporate into your ongoing reflections.
This space is ultimately about building a shared culture by embodying values of community for the sake of our collective liberation. If this feels unfamiliar, or you are not well-practiced in recognizing and correcting your own patterns of internalized domination, or you have difficulty accepting direct feedback from others (or even feel entitled to it), please reconsider participating at this time.
We are responsible to each other and how you show up matters because it influences everyone's experience, including how and what we learn. If it helps to think of this as a classroom-like experience, where I am facilitating and guiding a group process around provided content, and you are part of the group, that's great. Please avoid taking up too much space to serve your individual interests and questions. If you want to deepen your learning in a one-on-one setting, consider supportive sessions.
Respecting boundaries is non-negotiable, including mine. While this is an intimate space for sharing and connecting that is anchored in my own reflections, experiences, and creative expression, participation does not automatically grant anyone personal access to me or my time beyond what I offer the group as part of our shared process.
People who bring the most to this sort of experience are thoughtful, open, reflective, and genuinely interested in learning by connecting with others. You don't need to be super experienced in philosophy to participate. In fact, it's often better if you're not steeped in traditional approaches to academic philosophical engagement, because that's not what we're doing here. It's weird when people want to get into intellectual debates about specific thinkers. I'm not into that. If that's what you're looking for, take it up with a stranger in a bar.
"Sounds great! I'm in! Let me register already!"
Logistics and Details
Pricing Per Month:
$10 with a Buy Me A Coffee membership at any tier (memberships start at $5 and can be customized to any higher amount) - OR - $25 for a month
(By the way, if you feel inclined to crowdsource your community to raise funds for registration and set up ways to consistently share what you learn with them, that sounds like a promising way to build elegant ecosystems of abundance and nurture thoughtful relationships with your people. I fully support it!)
Registering:
Registration is for a month at a time and does not automatically repeat. When you register, you'll receive a confirmation message with a Zoom link that will be the same for every Sunday that month. Please add these dates with the link to your calendar!
You can register in advance or any time through the end of a month. However, if you register mid-month, you will only be able to participate in the remaining Sundays. Refunds will not be issued for missed weeks.
Getting the Pages:
I'll send pages as I make them to everyone who registers for that month. This means you can get them even if you never show up on a Sunday morning call (but you'd be missing out!).
Pages will be shared as attached pdfs in messages sent through the Buy Me a Coffee platform. These will go to your email inbox, but to open the attachments you will need to log in at buymeacoffee.com.
How to Become More Intimate with My Work
Still unclear about Romancing the Revolution, meta philosophical performance art, or the epistemology of intimacy? That's okay. I've been doing community-focused, personally reflective, and publicly engaged philosophy for over two decades, but my work has always been unconventional, experimental, and unique. That makes it difficult to describe to people who haven't encountered something like this before.
Sometimes, you just have to experience it to understand that something is happening.
Fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to get a sense for who I am and what I do. Here are a few starting places:
