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Unveiling Words to Ruin: A monthly deep dive into language, culture, and reimagining realities.
Words to Ruin is an extension of Cxlture Vxlture — a language processing tool and practice.
Welcome everyone!
Today is the day that I officially launch Cxlture Vxlture to the public! This has been a project in the works for a very long time. It’s as though it was created in ‘94 right along with me and since then, it’s been figuring out a way to manifest. After years of trying to truly understand what I want out of my practice (and beating my battle with perfectionism), I believe I’m in a space to truly bring you into my process.
In this first newsletter, I’ll explain what you can expect in your inbox every 22nd of the month, as well as more information about Cxlture Vxlture itself.
Note: This newsletter is pretty long. Although I am a big believer in bringing back long-form writing, I do understand in this reality we barely have time for ourselves. So, read in parts, read on a “lazy” Sunday, light some incense, whatever you have to do. Just know, I will try my best not to have it be this long for future newsletters (unless of course my long-form baddies say it’s a go!)
What is Words to Ruin?
The art of naming is something that’s always been a part of my life. From the cool coincidences I noticed or created surrounding my own name, to the fact that working as a strategist led me to becoming a namer (yes, I named products, services, and companies for a short while), naming for me has always been a way to affirm our realities.
Words hold worlds. That is why it is important to understand how and why we use them. It is important to understand what they can create. It is important to understand who they are for. And it is important to protect them. Words, names, languages — all can be used as a tool or used as a weapon.
What I’m noticing more and more is the weaponization of words against those who are trying to unravel themselves from this reality. I’m noticing the words that people use in order to make an understanding of what reality they are living in, be co-opted by those who either consciously or subconsciously uphold the realities that are harming us all. I’m noticing that the people who need to speak the most, are being silenced by the manipulation of their own voice.
With Words to Ruin, expect to explore words, terms, and concepts that are important to world building, but need reexamining so that we do not continue to down a path where people are using our own labor against us. This newsletter is a critical (but still fun) critique of language and culture that is an extension of my overall practice Cxlture Vxlture. Every 22nd of the month, expect a new word or term that gets ripped apart.
So, what is Cxlture Vxlture?
Cxlture Vxlture is my work persona and sphere. It serves as a communication [research and design] practice that explores how communication acts as a foundational element in creating realities.
My belief is that realities are formed from one’s imagination. Communication then functions as the processing tool in manifesting our realities from our imaginations. The manifestations become the lived experiences and realities that one, and potentially others, exist in. As there are many components to communication, Cxlture Vxlture focuses on communication from the lens of language, translations, and space.
Language - What are the languages we use to construct and uphold our realities/futures? What realities/truths are these languages creating? How can we utilize language in other ways or conjure new languages to create more sustainable realities for all entities?
Translations - How do we understand what is being told to us about our realities? How do we communicate to those who do not speak the same language as us?
Space - How do we embody our spaces?
From a pre-Whiteness (pre-Western, pre-colonial, pre-imperial, pre-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-misogynistic, and the many forms of marginalization and subjugation placed on beings who fall out of White labels) critical lens, I utilize my skill in writing, research, and strategy to pose and answer questions regarding how to create, recreate, and reimagine our realities — past, present, and future.
My hope is to fully embody and utilize the tools and technologies we’ve already had since time. My goals are to:
identify the realities in which we exist and whose imagination it stems from,
provide translations to people so that they can understand the language used to maintain and preserve the systems we’ve been subjugated to,
provide space for said people to question, use, rework, create, and/or find languages that help them connect back to their own imaginations, and,
provide space for said people to essentially play and test their imaginings in order to manifest alternative presents and futures that reflect all of us.
Cxlture Vxlture, as “grotesque” as it sounds, wants better worlds.
And, who is the person behind the brand?
I go by Bo (she/her), and I am still coming up with a cute term to describe what I’ve done, what I can do, and what I’m about to do. Bear with me.
I’ve always been a writer, a lover of stories, and super curious as a child, but I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. I didn’t know I could create my own practice. That I, like every being, am innately a designer, and could be a designer of my own reality.
I like to say that I am happily all over the place, after landing on the revelation that I can not belong to just one singular space. With that in mind, my various skills and passions mean that I embody the role of writer, researcher, and strategist, just as much as I embody the role of storyteller, investigator, critic, connector, (soft?) designer, and (Black black?) philosopher, (hood princess?) sociocultural anthropologist. My passions for research and communication are heavily influenced by my desires to materialize my imaginings of realities that sustain the collective — especially those of the collective that are perpetually disregarded, overworked, and underserved.
And may I ask, what are your values?
Cxlture Vxlture values community, love as a practice, autonomy of self, self-expression, openness, compassion, rest, movement, slowness, fun, play, safety, fluidity, constructing, deconstructing, working together, and solo time.
Below is my working manifesto that highlights some of my core beliefs:
Culture is a practice of existence, and in certain contexts, survival.
Is love and abundance the core of your praxis? Or is it fear and scarcity?
If you don’t acknowledge anti-Blackness as the underlying foundation of our realities past, present, and future, then you haven’t/aren’t doing the work.
Knowledge ain’t data - In our current state of existence, it has become more important to collect and hoard information as line items. What we “know” can not stop at the words we use to talk about or label experiences.
From theory to the hood — All of the work I do is not because I aim to be 'revered’ by a broken system. I don’t believe in expertise as a concept or a personality. I understand knowledge (our knowledge) is more complex and transcends the rather narrow institutions and constructions of intelligence. I know wisdom and who is considered wise, has nothing to do with accolades, or professionalism, or a “prestigious” education. We know wisdom lies on the plantations, on the street corners, in the penitentiaries. If the work you do does not transcend to the most underserved, to the people that are nothing like you, then you aren’t doing the work.
Time isn’t linear — Cxlture Vxlture may be one of the few future-forward practices that understands time is not linear. Thus the future is non-existent, just as much as it has already happened like the past, and is happening like the present. There is always time to interrogate and create/recreate.
Critique is not just preliminary work — what many fail to realize is that critique is a necessary and continuous part of the process. It is not something to check off as an action item. Critique is not only essential to the design of communities, but helps to hold communities together. Which means for it to really be helpful, it must be rooted in love.
I do not answer to, and try not to participate in the binary. Cxlture Vxlture understands the use of certain terms, but does not inherently fit into being anti- or de-, because I do not center what is not for us and what is vehemently against our existence.
We don’t move slow, we move with intention. However “long” that takes.
Are you a culture vulture, or a cxlture vxlture?
Who inspires you?
Black women. So much of who has affirmed me are those whose ideologies and/or identities are rooted in Black, Indigenous, and Queer politics — that which embraces and lives outside of the very narrowing politics of Whiteness.
Great, thank you for all the info!
And thank you for making it to the end of this newsletter! I’m so very excited to be in community with you all where we can mutually learn, talk, love on each other, laugh, share our truths, and whatever else comes to play. If you have the capacity, I’d appreciate it if you share this newsletter with others you may think would like this space. Also, send your feedback, your comments, questions, thoughts, whatever!
Every 7th of the following month, I’ll be releasing a podcast episode entitled, In Conversation With, to coincide with the previous newsletter and tie the themes to certain themes popping up in culture.
In the meantime, you can check out my website and/or follow me on IG.
See y’all soon!
Thanks for reading the Words to Ruin newsletter. To stay updated and support my work, consider sharing and subscribing or look into my practice Cxlture Vxlture.