Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

Hi all!

I come to you all with an ask: please support a dear friend in getting back on their feet. It is very important that I support fellow artists. Nothing about being an artist is sustainable. It is important that we support one another. We are looking to raise 13,000 USD. This is an urgent request.

My name is Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and I am an artist committed to supporting fellow creatives. Today, I am reaching out on behalf of an extraordinary artist and advocate who wishes to remain anonymous for privacy.

This individual is a Black, queer, disabled nonbinary photographer whose photographic work has been featured in major publications nationwide. They have documented the lives and work of celebrated Black writers, musicians, and cultural producers, and has served as a mentor and advocate for marginalized photographers.

In 2025, they lost their full-time job, which provided both a stable income and essential insurance to manage chronic health conditions. Since then, the challenges have mounted: they lost their home, have been moving between friends’ places, and are without a clear safety net. Their storage facility, which houses their entire archive of negatives, books, framed works, and equipment, is now at risk of being repossessed.

Amidst these hardships, a moment of hope arrived in the form of an invitation to participate in a major museum exhibition. However, this opportunity is not possible without community support.

I am asking that we rally around this amazing human to ensure that they have funds to cover the next few months as they work to rebuild their life after this catastrophic disruption. More than anything else, our goal is to secure a period of relief for them. They suffer from very intense depression, and this time has been extraordinarily difficult for them.

For transparency, funds will be used for the following:

• Rent for three months

• Storage facility fees

• Medical insurance

• Production for the museum exhibit

Any and all support is appreciated and necessary. Your generosity will help ensure this artist has a moment of ease and can continue their very necessary work.

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I don’t organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter let me take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

Table of Contents

Pre-I. No Promises

I. Uno Reverse

II. A Confession

III. A Nested Confession

IV. Self-Flagellation

V. An IEP with Allah?

Pre-I. No Promises

Just seven days ago, I published “Ramadan is an excellent time to stop being a scardey cat,” and today I am publishing “Ramadan is an excellent time to talk about disordered eating, metaphorical self-flagellation, and accepting Allah’s dispensations”.

My immediate thought was, “Oh, this is a series released every seven days during Ramadan.”

Then I said, “Girl, chill.”

Everything does not need to be formalized, and you are already burnt out, so why are you committing to more?

If it feels easeful, I will do two more “Ramadan is an excellent time…” And if I do not, then you are always welcome to reread the two that exist!

I. Uno Reverse

I am writing this after saying I wouldn’t.

Yesterday, between meetings, I read Ayana Zaire’s Cotton’s () newsletter, Transmuting AI Shame Into Erotic Self-Respect as soon as it was delivered to my feed. Shame is a familiar sensation for me. It is almost a default.

Typically, I let it fester, but I am trying, with some success, to rewire my nervous system.

II. A Confession

For the past six years, I have felt like a bad Muslim.

Well, if we are being brutally honest, I have always felt like a bad Muslim, but for today, we are just going to focus on Ramadan, lol.

Between medication switches that left me exhausted, low blood sugar issues that made fasting dangerous, traveling commitments that interrupted a steady fasting schedule, and emerging diagnoses that facilitated my understanding of how my neurology impacts burnout and consistency, Ramadan has been a time of deep shame and anxiety.

Even as I typed that sentence, I felt like I was making excuses for my spiritual lack.

A good Muslim fasts during Ramadan. That is just what good Muslims do.

III. A Nested Confession

I do not approach the month with excitement; I approach it with extreme guilt because I have not fasted consistently for six years.

My ability to abstain from food and drink for a full lunar cycle was such a point of pride.

Look at me! I am so good at self-restraint and discipline.

I have fasted since the age of thirteen. I have fasted more years than I have not. I found it quite easy; I like a challenge, and as an obsessive-compulsive person, Ramadan provides a cadence of hyperfocus, achievement, and perfection that feels comforting and familiar. It was not just the discipline, but my ability to override my healthy internal cues.

Fasting often made me sick. I developed disordered eating in the attempt to both restrain consumption and to eat the cleanest. I would also overcommit to gym sessions in order to maximize the health benefits of fasting. Some days, I could not wake up in time for suhoor but would still fast despite delirium and low blood sugar.

Fasting often made me sad. I never felt like I could catch up. I was behind on my daily juz’. I couldn’t always make the Taraweeh prayer because I was let out late from work. My prayers were often rushed because there was not enough time between lunch breaks.

IV. Self-Flagellation

Everything was all or nothing. If I had a bad fasting day, I believed the whole month was ruined and assumed Allah was angry with me. I punished myself for imperfection.

This was a form of self-flagellation. Allah’s love could only manifest through my suffering.

From ages 13 - 16, I attended an elite private Catholic School in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the country. There, I learned a lot about suffering, confession, and redemption. I learned to sharpen my perfectionism and self-competition mechanisms. Needless to say, metaphorical self-flagellation is a logic I may have absorbed during those years, though it is just as likely that this was the metastasizing of latent religious OCD or scrupulosity.

When I moved to New York in 2010, one of the first books I read was Jennifer Traig’s Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood (2006). It tells the story a Jewish girl with undiagnosis religious OCD that manifests as trying, quite earnestly, to follow every single obscure Jewish laws.

The book’s comical made me dismiss my own symptoms. She laughed about it and turned out just fine — she wrote a book!

Yet I saw pieces of myself in her story: performing wudu dozens of times to make sure I did it correctly; repeating prayers to ensure my Arabic pronounciation as if a slight mispronunciation would conjure some evil.

It would be another eight years and a lot of confusion before I had my own OCD diagnosis.

None of what I described is the fault of Ramadan, of Islam, of Allah. Practicing any spiritual commitment under capitalism’s imperatives of productivity, speed, and performance thereof — paired with my neurobiology — has made Ramadan a terrorizing and terrifying time.

I do not want to feel like that.

I do not deserve to feel like that.

And Allah does not want me to feel like that.

V. An IEP with Allah?

In a recent phonecall with my mother, I said I am writing an IEP plan for my relationship with Allah. My mom laughed, but I was serious. An IEP is an Individual Education Plan. An IEP outlines the legal obligations an institution has to ensure students with disabilities have access to a full educational experience. I am familiar with IEPs, as I have attended them with my mother for a sibling, and as a high school teacher, I often engaged with these documents. Having worked in secondary public school education through 2022, I am very familiar with the flaws in the IEP structure and disability services broadly.

In invoking the IEP as a surrogate structure for this conversation about spiritual practice, I am interested in what it means to acknowledge that my connection to Allah is not plug-and-play, but requires scaffolding rooted in mercy and grace rather than punishment.

And the mercy and grace have always been there. I have simply rejected them. For everything Allah asks us to do, there are dispensations.

So here is another uno reversal moment:

I do not need an IEP or accommodations that sit outside of Islam.

Allah has already provided them.

I only need to accept them.

Here is to me, slowly accepting the mercy that has always been there.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I don’t organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter let me take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

This morning, I thanked Allah (swt) for all that He has given me and thanked him even more for all that he has taken away from me. It was the first prayer of this type. I am always asking for things, but I need to start saying thank you for what was taken or lost because nan one (autocorrect is trying to correct this!) of them do I want back.

nan (not any) is Black vernacular, but as I just learned today, NaN (not a number) is also a mathematical term for when a calculation doesn’t produce a valid number. Love when these overlaps happen.

I am writing this at 30,000 feet en route to Los Angeles. With only two hours left on this flight, I have made this a time-bound writing task. I stop writing when my battery dies or this plane lands.

This is not how I intended for Ramadan to begin: chaotic emails in my inbox, mounting costs as I try to escape an unhealthy situation, and best of all, flashbacks of an abusive marriage where psychological, emotional, and financial warfare was routinely deployed to keep a power imbalance in play.

I keep thinking about how I have been bullied and intimidated into doing things I do not want to do throughout my life. I think about myself as a child and an adult, and the feeling of smallness is unbearable. I feel so much shame when I think about cowering. Shame for making ilahs out of other people because I feared these people more than I feared Allah (swt). Shame for letting things slide that should have been addressed. What do I look like, being a scaredy cat? I’ve been a scaredy cat for a while.

When crazy stuff happens, I stay quiet. I internalize. My body grows inflamed. Hot from the center. It’s conditioning. It is the respectable thing to do, I say. I am now protecting myself.

I am back on my team.

I feel small. I have felt small. But, on the other side of that smallness is righteous anger. Not the kind of anger that makes me want to fight in the streets, but that type of quiet anger that has reorganized my nervous system and realigned my spiritual fortitude. It is the kind of anger that makes me smile because I know Allah (swt) will resolve this situation in ways that I cannot even imagine – in ways that surpass my most desired resolution. I do not have the imaginative capacity to even consider what is possible.

Am I being haughty or naive? Not at all. I am doing what I have never been able to do: fully trust in Allah (swt).

I am the daughter of Gwen, who is the daughter of Berthenia, who is the daughter of Constance, who is the daughter of an unnamed Black woman whose name I should know. And one thing we don’t do, generationally, is let people play in our faces (especially during the Holy season of Ramadan and the jubilant Black History Month). As a Black woman, I am very familiar with this rhythm. And while a single gesture cannot disrupt the structural anti-black and misogynistic cadence that undergirds so many of my interactions, I can at the very least do something about what is sitting in front of me now.

I am not powerless, but I am so tired. It is exhausting to have to always fight. But I’m not too tired to handle mine. I am going to take a nap, recharge, make the most elaborate dua I have ever made, and have some tea. I am going to remind myself that all things have their sunset and Allah (swt) is supreme over all of this.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I don’t organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter let me take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

☺️ Hello!

I. Video Works up at Highline Art + February 11 Event

A more thorough newsletter is in the works, but in the interim, I wanted to share some exciting news: In early January, I opened a solo screening of some of my video works at Highline Art in New York City!

Join me on Wednesday, February 11th, at 6:30 pm for a discussion with Taylor Zakarin. I would love to see you! Get tickets here!

On view are: keeping count, annotated (2021-2023); interlude (2026); and disorganize the spirit, i (2025), which is currently included in my solo exhibition, we leak, we exceed, at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Thank you to UCROSS for providing me the two weeks of quiet, rest, and delicious meals as I finished disorganize the spirit, i (2025).

Stills for disorganize the spirit, i (2025), scored by Th&o. | 00:06:25

Stills for keeping count, annotated (2021-2023), scored by Th&o. | 00:09:38

Stills for interlude (2026), silent | 00:01:05

When I started making video work a few years ago, I did not expect it to consume me. But over a dozen works later, and here I am. I am immensely thankful to my brother, Thando, for the beautiful scores he has produced for my work and all the feedback along the way. Making video and film work feels like a deeply sculptural and spiritual process. I love collaborating with Thando, and one of my greatest joys in the past few months has been tinkering in Premiere Pro and scanning in film. I can lock in for 18 hours editing a 30-second clip, building 72 layers of varying tones, text, and movement. I appreciate the obsessive quality of this. More than anything, I like the process of collecting, sequencing, layering, and folding over time.

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II. Quick Check-in

I am writing you from Santa Clarita, the home of the California Institute of the Arts, where I am the inaugural Charles Gaines Faculty Chair through 2027. I am in town for the start of the semester, and I always book the same hotel: a cute, tucked-away spot near the train station and a freeway. I find the sound of mechanical motion really relaxing, and I simply love trains. This was my first time flying in two months, after flying nearly every week through 2025. It was nice to settle back into this routine and learn that, while flying terrifies me because of my near-death experience in 2022 (and because I just started rewatching Lost, Yellowjackets, and diving into Hijack), it also excites me because it is teaching me to sit with turbulence. The flight into Salt Lake City was rough. I made dua, closed my eyes, sat forward, and held steady.

I created an animation of a dancing serif A to calm myself:

I deplanned with considerable pride. It seems like a small thing, but I realized I was not proud of not having a panic attack on the plane; I was proud that I did a body scan, assessed the situation, and regulated. I discussed interoception in my last newsletter and my commitment to slowing down and listening to my bodily cues, rather than being on autopilot and plowing through my feelings. The last few months have been hectic — lots of conflict and uncertainty. I have felt the pangs of anxiety deep in my belly. I have lost hair (she is growing back!). I have sat quietly in a dark room without a solution, but here we are.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I don’t organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter let me take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

☺️ Hello!

I. New Year’s Eve

I am proud of myself. On the 30th, I had a pedicure, a manicure, and a massage. Then I slept a lot.

Last night, I didn’t make any resolutions. I didn’t make any plans. I didn’t yearn. I just did whatever felt nice to me; it was a new experience.

I ate the rest of the sandwich I’d ordered earlier that day. It wasn’t great — too salty and bread too wet (I despise wet sandwiches), but it met its caloric requirements. I decided I really wanted Red Vines, so I ordered some and tinkered with some code. Here, I learned that it isn’t writing that I find difficult; it is the interface: I can write when it is a dispersed field of hyperlink sections with audio and diagrammatical interventions, but not straight through, top to bottom. I finished the central piece of writing I’d been working on all year. I sent out thank-you notes with this writing included.

In the corner of the living room where I’d tucked myself away, I toggled between tabs of random research while that tray of red snacks dwindled.

And, I danced to a lot — how come no one told me about Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club? I listened to it on repeat about 20 times. Is she okay? Please catch me up on this; I don’t have the patience to do it myself.

I FaceTimed family in South Africa and laughed about oxtail tacos. I FaceTimed my family in California and told my mama we need to stay in good health so that we can be elderly ladies cackling on the porch. I trolled the sibling group chat.

Then, I went to bed.

I woke up very slowly this morning. I swept and mopped. I ate some Goldfish and put away the Coke Zeros I left on the counter overnight. I tried on my new X-Files shirt (thank you, M + T!). I organized my tote bag. I FaceTimed my family in Johannesburg. We laughed about Americans who keep wild animals in their homes, bears that open people’s doors, and whether the Afrikaans expletive “voetsek” is understood by animals everywhere, regardless of location.

I logged into my MacBook and emptied a cart of things I felt were absolutely necessary just the evening before. Reentered the sibling group chat to complain about poor TV writing alongside Will Tavlin’s 2025 essay on N+1, Casual Viewing. I sat in the chair and watched some YouTube while I ate the most mediocre brisket pho.

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I almost got distracted, but I wiped down the counter before sitting down to write this:

II. Interoception

10/10. I recommend doing what feels good in your body rather than some other nonsense. And sometimes, knowing what I am feeling, or even what feels good, is elusive.

I want to be chill, but I do not know how to relax. If not-ever-chill-even-under-threat were a person, it would be me. I always need to be doing something. I could watch a movie, but I could also research the geography of the featured location to ensure it was filmed on set, accurately portrays the scenery, and doesn’t exploit any location-specific lore. There is indeed a tiny, but loud (and passionately impatient) motor inside of me. More than anything, I rarely know that I need to relax until I am at the point of burnout.

Of course, it is anxiety — have to stay busy! But it is also about something called interoception, which complicates my little holy trinity of neurodivergence. Interoception is our perception of internal bodily signals. This includes things like knowing when you are hungry, thirsty, or cold. Interoception is a reminder that something is off-balance. I have struggled with interoception my entire life, even before I knew the term. I can sit for hours coding or writing without getting up to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. My mother recounts that I was absorbed for hours without interruption.

I have, like many people, outsourced my interoception. I rely on external cues to manage these internal signals. This outsourcing emerged incrementally. I realized I was not receiving internal cues to drink water or eat. Like, the signal was interrupted entirely, and I’d get to the end of the day, wonder why I feel delirious before realizing I’ve only had a cup of lukewarm coffee.

I have a CGM (constant glucose monitor) that sends a loud sound to my phone because I wasn’t feeling low blood sugar soon enough to prevent an emergency. I have an app that tells me when I should be feeling tired and when to go to bed. I use a 60-minute timer to remind myself to drink water. There is so much infrastructure and scaffolding to supplement what the body is supposed to do. An expired CGM device meant I’d have to go hours without knowing if I’d eaten enough. I will not get into the financial costs of wonky interoception. Maybe that is another newsletter.

III. Interoception under Optimization Culture?

I wondered why I needed a series of apps and people to help me eat and sleep. Why did my baby brother have to call me to ask, “Did you eat today?” As an adult, it feels weird; it feels infantilizing. I’d grown dependent on this external structure. I felt lucky to afford these supports, but also resentful.

Before I learned about interoception, I was confused but still ashamed.

When I began thinking about the relationship between interoception and capitalism, my awareness expanded. We are expected to move so fast — productivity and grind culture is the logic. Everything must be optimized. We do not have downtime. There is no aftercare. We have normalized the automation of most everything, so I no longer need to pause and ask how I feel. I get a pop-up that tells me what I should be feeling at a particular time, and what I should do or the commodity I should buy to address that need, before I even have a chance to let that sensory information settle.

Indeed, my interoception is impacted by my neurology; it is a “comorbidity.” But when you add the collective theft of leisure and unstructured time, it becomes easier (and truthfully, more feasible at times) to rely on an external cue to quickly tell us what to do than to slow down and do a body scan.

I want to be clear: I am not criticizing the use of these apps or structures. These can be lifelines, literally, for a range of disabilities. What I am criticizing is the convenient resistance to acknowledging the relationship between personal neurological conditions and socio-economic structures in the way that our interoception functions. It is not either or; it is both.

IV. Self-Carisms

We are offered self-carisms as a solution to our exhaustion, malnutrition, and anxiety. When I began to shape language around my interoception before I knew what it was, I was told to practice better self-care. The issue was that I was not being kind to myself. And I am sure that was part of it. But apparently, I was missing cues because I chose to ignore them, having not invested in the self-care gospel. These self-care campaigns do two dangerous things (among many others).

First, the structure of overzealous exploitation that normalizes our precarity, then resells often culturally appropriated and bastardized luxury objects and experiences back to us. We are offered a solution to a fictionalized problem: we are exhausted and overextended, not because we do not take “me time,” as we are told, but because the undermining and defunding of support structures alongside the wholesale theft of unstructured time creates this predictable (and profitable) predicament.

They benefit from the lie. And they benefit from the disingenuous solution.

I do not need a face mask. I need community. I need access to consistent healthcare.

Second, this self-care culture teaches us to defer our basic bodily needs until a more convenient time, ideally after 9-to-5. We need a spa weekend because during the week, we had to dissociate to make it to the weekend.

(There is more to be said here, but I want to take a nap and I am respecting this cue!)

IV. Interoception and Resolutions

This year, I decided not to make resolutions because I am choosing to stop bullying myself. The language of resolutions has often felt accusatory and punitive. Even with the shift away from grind-vision board-girl boss resolution culture toward less “measurable” goals, I still think there is a looming weight of completion and competition. These have never been generative motivators for me.

I do not want to become more optimized. I am a human, not a machine.

I do not want to outsource my self-awareness.

I want to be in my body.

I want to slow down and retrain my interoception so I can hear my needs more clearly.

Again, there is more here, but I want to sleep :)

My only commitments for 2026 are to engage in activities that restore the volume and consistency of my internal signals. A moment ago, I couldn’t tell whether I was hungry. I was about to look at my Apple Watch to check my blood sugar to see if I am at the nausea threshold. I stopped and said, “Are you hungry?” Sadly, I realized that I don’t know what that “feels” like; I usually rely on my watch, the onset of a migraine, or a message from one of my brothers. So I am making a list — a list of my body cues. Seems elementary, but I do not care.

I need to strengthen my antennae.

Thus far, I do not know what that will look like, but as a starter:

1. I will stay curious about my exhaustion cues. Then, I will rest when I am tired.

2. I will stay curious about my hunger cues. Then, I will eat when I am hungry.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I don’t organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter let me take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

Subscribe now

☺️ Hello!

To get me back into the habit of newslettering, for the next eight (or nine?) days of 2025, daily, I will share a 2025 reflection.

Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth up: on noise, disobedience, and sankofa

I share a lot of cutesy neurodivergent memes on my Instagram — the autistic urge to… or how a person with ADHD tells stories. And they are fun. We all laugh. But, admittedly, I have participated in a pernicious rebranding campaign that reframes neurodivergence as a set of quirky personality traits that “we all have a little bit of,” rather than what it is: a set of neurodevelopmental disorders that affect how we process the world and, in turn, how we are excluded or minimized by it.

I received an autism diagnosis on April 3, and I am still grieving.

I still have nights when I am angry. Angry that no one caught it. Angry that so much has been hard, but I was never believed. Angry that nothing about me could be “normal.” Nothing is easy or default.

Clearly, I have not arrived at the influencer-motivational speaker-powerhouse arc of the late-diagnosis autism storyline. You know the one where the despondent and overwhelmed overachiever knows something is not quite right, but cannot name it. She finally gets a diagnosis, and suddenly, everything in her life clicks into place. She leaves her full-time job to become an inspirational speaker, reminding us all that we have powers we can leverage, scale, brand, and optimize. Even neurodivergence — a literal divergence — still has a “right way,” a brand. How silly!?! There is a correct way to be disabled.

I did not reach this powerhouse-autistic-influencer arc because I do not want to.

I created a series over a decade ago called “How to Suffer Politely (and Other Etiquette).” That “tell your humor with triumphant humor” and “lower the pitch of your suffering” are pedagogical routines: we are trained to heroically render the emotional distress of having our difference weaponized as minimally offensive and disruptive.

And please, don’t forget to make us laugh.

I once recounted a bullying story from my childhood. I was bullied mercilessly. And yet, in telling it, I made about five jokes, one of which was, “I do not agree with being bullied, but I understand it,” then proceeded to read an entry from my fourth-grade class journal.

None of this shit is funny.

That ostracism and exclusio left indelible marks. However, I minimized them because it has never been safe to say, “I can still remember how it felt to know I wasn’t the right kind of person, being reminded every day of this social designation, yet not knowing how to terraform my identity quickly enough to be an acceptable person, to be safe. I can still see their grins.”

But there, I just said it.

Lamenting over my neurodivergent struggles isn’t an admission of wrongness in me; it is a very reasonable response to being a part of a system that refuses to “process” us. We are noise. We are dirty data (Hito Steryl). In The Poetics of Noise from Dada to Punk (2021), John Melillo writes, “For Attali [who wrote a great book on noise], noise is both an index of power - for those who control what counts as noise - and a principle of subversion.” All parts of us cannot pass through the sieve; what remains are the obedient bits.

And this shit is annoying—point blank.

I do not feel bad about being autistic or having ADHD; I feel bad that some folks thought they could trick me into hating myself, rather than hating the system that has determined I am unworthy of curiosity. And sometimes, they get me, lol. Sometimes, I am mad at my brain, my heart, my spirit. Then I take magnesium, sleep, and try again not to internalize the ableism.

There is always a sanctioned plot to follow, always consequences for disobedience. When you hop off the teleological train headed to wherever has been deemed an acceptable destination, you fall into a void of unintelligible noise. Unreadable and unreachable. That void is out of sight. How convenient is that? You can’t see me. You can’t find me. I am not showing up in the database. There is a glitch. There is a 404 error. These end-of-year reflections explain why I have spent the last 18 months writing about noise and disobedience. As I have written (for a previous writing commission that was not a good fit, but is now part of my artist statement):

I continue

We must return to the scene of presumed certainty. InshaAllah, 2026 will be the year I go back and fetch all the parts of myself, all the noise, all the dirty data.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I don't organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter let me take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

Subscribe now

☺️ Hello!

To get me back into the habit of newslettering, for the next eight (or nine?) days of 2025, daily, I will share a 2025 reflection.

Second up: this website will never be done (or, yet another addendum to the colophon)

I got to the end of the day and said, “Dang, I don’t have any writing for these people, and I just promised them yesterday.” Then I realized I had spent the better part of the year building this website, specifically the artist statement. So, I will share that as the first part of this reflection:

I decided I was “finished” with the writerly undertaking of building a digital personal archive after six consecutive hours at my computer without a break. The city is tranquil during the Christmas holiday, and time has flown by. I broke the coding hyperfixation by eating a gluten-free chocolate muffin made with carrots and zucchini. (I didn’t bake them!) As of 9:30 pm EST on Christmas Eve, this is what the website looks like:

The effort began with trying to squeeze an “artist statement” from pages of notes and voice memos. Compression and linearity have been kicking my butt since the 1980s. I don’t know how to write without switching between applications, spaces, fonts, writing utensils, or colors: each sentence doesn’t require the same gesture. How disrespectful to punch keys, type a sentence that needed the breaching gesture of a pen tip tearing through paper fibers? A little hyperbolic, yes. But sometimes the cadence of a phrase requires a typed sentence. Other times, the weight of the sentence needs to be levied by my hand alone. There are times when written communication isn’t sufficient, and I need to add a voice note.

I endure as a writer, even though I am insecure about the title; I feel like I am fumbling over and into words. Some of them survive the collision, and what shows up here, I guess, is whatever remains. I have taken to saying “I am good at language, but bad at writing.” Here, the bad is not the pejorative. Writing assignments confound me; a single tangent obliterates the possibility of “staying on task.” (Heck, there were about five splinter essays that started in the one newsletter alone!) Writing requires a steadfast faith in protocol that I cannot guarantee. I am bad at what I have been conditioned to call writing. I like noise — the stuff over in the corner of your eye.

Writing a coherent artist statement for an application is one thing, but writing for a digital context means designing it to be read as a digital object. I decided to write an artist statement. Then I decided the website could serve as the artist statement, sort of. Rebuilding this website brought me back to my love of early-90s personal websites — a nostalgia for websites that invite user activity beyond scrolling. I know how to build a capital-W website, but I prefer lowercase website design. I want a website that is also an art object, or experience? And an art object that, like me, is always under construction:

An Addendum to the Colophon

1. There are a few chance-based navigation modes, as well as opportunities for user input and compilation. I would like to include a few more tiny quests across the website. In particular, I want to play more with pop-up windows and canvases. I am also interested in more choose-your-own-adventure and user submissions. This website has a long way to go, but she is still cute. If you have website suggestions, email me here: studio@kameelahr.com

2. Dispersed throughout the website are pockets, cavities, and folds a reader can tumble into; the work statement is not contained to the pages labelled “Work Statement.” You’ll find bits and pieces as headers, footnotes, images, etc.

3. There are several baby sites on the mother site. Explore those as well. I like nesting things and burying trinkets. Next week, I will release a new plaything in January, and it may involve finding a deeply nested website.

4. I do not enjoy building sites for others, but I enjoy talking with them about their websites. I think every person should develop their first website independently. I think it is a good exercise in exploring the varied “purposes” of a website. The struggle can be generative.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

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☺️ Hello!

To get me back into the habit of newslettering, for the next eight (or nine?) days of 2025, daily, I will share a 2025 reflection.

First up: how are we friends, how can you love me if you cannot write my obituary? (or, how death studies are teaching me about curiosity as a register of love)

For the past year, I have been training as a death doula. In addition to the asynchronous coursework and synchronous meetups, I have been running a death studies group, where we gather on Zoom to discuss our “programming” around death. I have a long way to go: I want to get a certificate in thanatology, receive training in Islamic burial and washing, work closely with a nursing home, and visit all the gravesites of my (known) ancestors.

Death is so much about living. Alua Arthur is the founder of Going With Grace, the program facilitating my death doula training. One of Arthur’s guiding questions is: “What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?” This question scares me because I have spent most of my life focused on keeping everyone else’s peace intact, so I have not nurtured my own. More than anything, this question terrifies me because a graceful death is predicated on being present, and being present requires me to reflect on the relationships I have built in this dunya, so that I am present within a loving embrace. I must also consider the foundation upon which I build new relationships.

Endings have buoyed me over the last few years, not because I enjoy conflict, but because they have all been healthy and necessary choices. The sunsetting of these relationships was not about an individual situation that blurred my horizon line; instead, it was about recognizing and honoring the misalignment between what I needed and deserved from community, and what I was told I needed and deserved. Each sunset, ending, or pivot is information. This is not meant to diminish these relationships or reduce them to the status of intellectual study or instrumentalized experience; despite endings, I still honor that, at a moment in time, something occurred, and that people are, well, people — and sometimes we can no longer be the type of people who share the same physical or psychic spaces. When I say “information,” I mean that thinking only about that relationship in a single plot line put me on the defensive; I was great at articulating what I do not need or deserve, but was fully immobilized by the task of naming what community and care could be.

A not-so-novel idea said by many before: curiosity is a register of love. It is affective and embodied.

Last year, I wrote about this here, but maybe I will expand for tomorrow’s newsletter:

Over the last 16 months, I have crafted a list of questions that help me process: Am I in a mutually loving relationship with this person? Is this a friend?

1. If this person reaches Jannah, will they ask Allah about me?

2. Can this person write my obituary?

3. Do I want this person to attend my funeral?

4. Is this a person I want to sit with me at my bedside as I die?

5. Does this person want me to have the joy, success, and happiness they have experienced?

6. Is this person happy for me when something exciting happens?

7. Are there things I still want to learn about this person?

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

☺️ Hello!

Table of Contents:

1. 👋🏽 Hello from Sheridan, Wyoming!

2. ⚙️ Project Updates

3. 🖼️ Exhibitions

4. ☺️ Joyful Things

1. 👋🏽 Hello from Sheridan, Wyoming

Y’all, I know I have been MIA, so I wanted to drop a baby newsletter of updates before some post-40th birthday reflections next week.

Also, if you choose to monetarily support this newsletter, do it for the quality, not the consistency :-) I cannot promise consistency as I am a one-woman show (plus my amazing studio manager, who makes sure that emails don’t get lost!) I can always promise quality.

I am here in Sheridan, Wyoming, on residency at UCROSS with support from the Yale School of Art. It has only been two days, but I am enjoying myself. I have a beautiful bedroom. I bike to my studio (more on this Monday). Our chef drops off wonderful lunches to our studios and prepares an amazing dinner every weekday. I am beyond grateful. I usually find residencies difficult because by the time I settle into my space, it is time to pack up and leave. However, this feels different. Just a full day in, and I've already accomplished a lot. It's simply because all my needs are taken care of, allowing me to focus on making. It is a privilege — such a privilege. One that should be afforded to all of us.

June: Brooklyn to Paris to Venice

I spent the entire summer away from my apartment in Brooklyn. First, it was Paris, FR, for a site visit for an upcoming group exhibition at Palais de Tokyo. Then it was Venice, IT, where I presented about death bots and machine learning at the Chat Token Vector Questioning Models of Language and Neo-Structuralism in AI conference organized by Matteo Pasquinelli. You can see the presentation here. The convening was hosted by the ERC project AIMODELS (full title: ‘The Culture of Algorithmic Models: Advancing the Historical Epistemology of Artificial Intelligence’) at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice — they investigate the combined socio-technical history of contemporary AI models and models of intelligence. This was my first time presenting publicly on death and machine learning, and to be honest, I was deeply intimidated as the only non-specialist/non-PhD, but it went really well, and I look forward to continuing this research into post-mortem data and information rights, zombies, and knowledge management. I do not want to go into academia, but I do not mind lurking around the fringes.

Please invite me to more convenings like this. You can invite me here.

June: Venice to Berlin to Brooklyn

After braving a completely water-based city for a few days, I headed to Berlin to catch up on gallery business. I stayed at a hotel I’d never stayed at before and got a few hours of non-work time in. Thank you, Luca and the whole team over at NOME Gallery, for hosting me and supporting my practice over the past seven years — and thank you for finding all the best Vietnamese and Japanese spots in Berlin!

July: Brooklyn to East Palo Alto

I spent a few days at home and surprised my family in the Bay Area. Still working, I managed to have amazing Mongolian BBQ with my mom and baby brother, looked at a bunch of old photos with my dad, and cackled a lot with my other brothers. I got to visit the wetlands near my parents’ house and watch the birds.

July: Brooklyn to Montpellier to Arles to Paris

Then back to Brooklyn for a few days to clean and pretend that I live there. I then headed to Montpellier, FR, to co-teach Languaging the Contemporary with dear dear Chang Yuchen. This is the fourth year in a row that she and I have co-taught a writing and publishing intensive to Bennington College (formally affiliated with the University of the Arts) MFA dance students at the Institut Chorégraphique International (International Choreographic Institute) summer conference in Montpellier, France.

We can’t believe it’s been so many years — almost half a decade. This summer, I stayed at an apartment further away from the city center and enjoyed some nice walks, cooking for a few days, and eating really delicious local food. Somehow, my allergy to most fruit did not apply in Montpellier, and I had more apricots than I am prepared to confess. I was able to find one day in the work week to sneak to Arle,s where I visited LUMA Arles. It is such a large place! I took a nice train ride back to Montpellier to wrap up the last few classes before a lovely closing dinner at the director’s house. I am grateful to be invited to these teaching opportunities because I learn so much. One day, Yuchen and I will say more about this experience, but co-teaching is a magical and intimate experience that I do not have all the words for. I am deeply indebted to my amazing students who gave me so much language for my own practice and my livingness.

I skipped back over to Paris for more work and decided to have one day of fun. Lots of bookstores, lots of yogurt, lots of apricots, lots of walking!

Sometimes, people think I am traveling for pleasure. Instagram is funny that way. While my artistic and pedagogical practice is pleasurable, I am traveling for work. I am making this distinction because a few people have said things to me that made me curious about how I am perceived. Yes, I am on many planes, but I do it to support myself (I’m my sole safety net, and I am the safety net for many others who wouldn’t do it for me — but that stopped on August 2nd, lol) and my family. I would love to travel for pleasure solely. If you want to fund that, then let me know, lol. Until then, I am racking up Delta miles for work and stealing a few moments to eat nice fruit and sit quietly.

I'm not sure why I feel compelled to make this declaration — perhaps I believe it is my responsibility to avoid cosplaying a particular artist's lifestyle. I do not have a trust fund, I work multiple jobs, often feeling exhausted and alone, and misunderstood. Learning that I am autistic in April, on top of OCD and ADHD, reminded me that while disability impacts us all differently, I have never been able to tap out or hope someone else can carry the load for me. It is just me. I do not get breaks because part of disability seems like proving you are not disabled.

There is a Kaytranada song I love, Freefall. I often dream about the day when I can free-fall, let someone else carry me, even for a day, and actually relax. I appreciate the opportunities Allah has given me in this dunya. However, it can be difficult and lonely, especially when I'm doing it without a community.

Whenever I speak to students, I like to be very honest — I worked a full-time job with benefits for almost 15 years; I live in a rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn; I spend most of my money on research books. There are elements of my life that are very difficult, and these are not always apparent. Not because I choose not to show them, but sometimes, there is no time to slow down and say, "This is hard."

I don't ask for much, and perhaps this is an area for improvement. I once saw a meme that said something like always being the listener or comforter means that if you ever get your turn to be listened to or comforted, then you’d not even know what to do. I have been on my own since I was 16/17 and am quite independent, but am reminded that radical independence is a trauma response to never being able to rely on support from others. I am looking forward to learning how to accept help and not be too burned by past attempts to reach out for support that went unanswered or unacknowledged.

The past few months, I have deeply reflected on how solid a family I have. My parents and four brothers are the only family I have, and they are the best humans I could have ever been blessed with. Loving, but firm. Serious at times, but always down to clown. I could not have been luckier to be born into this little weird family. We do not all understand each other, but there is curiosity. And I believe love is about curiosity, not understanding. You can read more about this in an old newsletter:

And I wrote this two years ago:

I want to bring Elvia Wilk back for second.

I like this notion of love that does not rest on mutual recognition [see: Elvia Wilk] as much as a desire to actually unknow and unrecognize — that possibly the height of love is not freezing people into a clear image but accepting that that person swells beyond the compositional field you have created for them.

On July 31, I had a startling recognition: this person didn't understand me, which was unfortunate, and they also showed no curiosity about me. I'm unsure what to do with that information, but it's been important for me to become more aware of what love feels like for me.

August: Brooklyn to Sheridan

I got back to Brooklyn in time to celebrate my 40th birthday on August 1st. I can’t believe I am 40 years old. I worked and attended a lovely dance typography workshop. Then I got my favorite Thai food and passed out, lol. Allah has given me so many years, and inshaAllah I have many more. 40 does feel different for no other reason than an increased awareness of my mortality. It makes sense that the year I turn 40 becomes the year I re-engage with my death doula training. We are in week 3, and yes, I am behind, but I am enjoying the weekly gatherings and everyone’s deep vulnerability.

I started a death studies group as part of my training. It is a free group of folks interested in talking about death. Each session will be anchored to a reading. Register here! It is called Death Chase Me Down after a June Jordan poem. We meet online every other Thursday: 5:30-6:30 pm EST | Sept 4 - Dec 2, but no sessions in October!

Register here! It’s free!

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By August 3rd, I was on my way to Wyoming. I am sitting in the sun room of the main house writing to you now. I am wrapping up some writing projects while here — two essays debut soon. And I am also editing and shooting for these film projects. While I am here, I am also going to find time to sit still, inshaAllah, and take one hike. Just kidding, no hiking, lol. I struggle to manage the heat here (but everywhere) — the big skies mean direct sunlight, and the heat makes me very nauseous.

Sheridan to Seattle

When this two-week residency ends, I am headed to Seattle to install we leak, we exceed at the Henry Art Gallery.

Seattle to Brooklyn to New Haven

I will get a few days before returning to teach at the Yale School of Art - Sculpture. I am doing the thesis workshop again and have designed a new course on the life and death of sculptural work using organic materials. The syllabus is shaping up nicely!

If you are also speeding to refine your syllabi, please join the syllabus party. Orange Tangent Study is hosting a syllabus party on August 10, where I will share insights into the poetics of syllabus design. We will then collaborate in Zoom to finalize these syllabi for our students. Even if you are not teaching a course, please join us to begin thinking about a speculative syllabus.

The session will NOT be recorded.

I am looking forward to hosting more free workshops for educators. Drop me a note here to let me know what else you’d like to see.

As I noted before, as we close our collaborations in May, we look forward to working with new teams in late 2025/early 2026. We like to take reflective breaks to ensure we can be the best for our collaborators, so no new projects can begin before September. Please email me at hello@orangetangent.study! We have a new team member specializing in boutique systems design. We're excited about fun learning opportunities, so please share what you are working on!

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On September 1, I will be visiting the faculty at the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art. I won't be able to return to Paris, but will be remotely delivering a lecture on exotic matter, ecotones, and digestion in relation to Clarice Lispector’s Aqua Viva, Beverly Buchanan’s Marsh Ruins, and Bhanu Kapil’s Schizophrene.

In September, I will be teaching an ugly coding workshop in Los Angeles. More on that soon! I will be in town on September 21, so send me food recs or events to check out.

2. ⚙️ Project Updates

The Little Octopus School

The Little Octopus School is a roaming learning environment for radical play and improvisation.

We were hoping to be up and ready in mid-April, but Allah is truly the best of planners. We are back in September with new classes and a new website! A sneak peek of our logo, designed by the lovely Chang Yuchen.

3. 🖼️ Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

23 Aug 2025 to 26 Apr 2026
Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA)
we leak, we exceed | More Information

17 Oct 2025 to 22 Feb 2026
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery (Swansea, UK)
Artes Mundi 11 | More Information

Group Exhibitions

6 June 2025 to 28 Sept 2025
Vitra Design Museum (Rhein, DE)
The Shakers: A World in the Making | More Information

17 July 2025 - 30 August 2025
Island 83 Gallery (New York, NY)
centrifugal More Information

18 Sept 2025 to 13 Dec 2025
Print Center New York (New York, NY)
Data Consciousness: Reimagining Du Bois’ Data Portraits in the 21st Century | More Information

17 Oct 2025 to 22 Feb 2026
National Museum in Cardiff (Cardiff, UK)
Artes Mundi 11 | More Information

22 Oct 2025 to 15 Feb 2026
Palais de Tokyo (Paris, FR)
ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art and Francophone Thought | More Information

24 - 26 Oct 2025
Counterpublic (St. Louis, Missouri)
Circus of Life | More Information

4. ☺️ Joyful Things

• I have been inspired by my lovely MFA Dance students to finally take a dance class. I start house dance in September. Wish me luck!

• My uncle found a quilt and a knitted blanket from my great-grandmother from Arkansas! I am so excited and grateful. I never had a chance to meet her, but heard stories and saw photos. Also, in the last LA visit to clean my late nan’s house, we found the VHS of my great-grandmother’s 100th birthday party. I cannot wait to get it digitized.

• Glitch, a favorite platform for creating and hosting web apps, shut down, and I decided not to transfer all of my projects. The Pocket bookmarking app shut down, and I decided not to save any of my links. I have been inspired by this video and recent research in personal knowledge management, “second brains,” and a series of attempts to capture knowledge. I never thought about the emotional relief of … deleting.

• My favorite sightings during my travels. Graffiti and t-shirts do not end anything, but it was heartening to see support across so many places this summer:

  Brooklyn — Venice, IT — Venice, IT — Venice, IT — Berlin, DE — Arles, FR

• I got bumped to first class on my flight back to East Palo Alto and had a chance to watch Mickey 17. I have so much to say about this film.

• On my birthday, I was in a shared Uber, and it was everyone’s birthday — the driver and the woman next to me!

• My mama earned four A.S. degrees, magnum cum laude, at the age of 71. Very proud of this lady!

• I started photographing again with my Ricoh. It feels really, really nice. I started as a photographer — see below. It is nice to come home.

  

  

  

  

  

Also, LOL. I started this newsletter at 11 am MDT, saying it would be a shortie, and here we are at almost 3,000 words, hours later.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

Subscribe now

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more about the newsletter rhythm here.

☺️ Hello!

Table of Contents:

1. 👋🏽 Hello and Ramadan Mubarak!

2. ⚙️ Project Updates

3. 🖼️ Exhibitions

4. 🌳 Prompts + Public Art

5. 🗣️ Public Programming

6. 📖 Teaching

1. 👋🏽 Hello and Ramaḍān Mubarak!

In early February, I soft-launched my talk show at Becoming NEW: Artists on Change and Transformation at the Great Hall at Cooper Union for the New Museum. It was really cute, and I had a lot of fun. More episodes are coming soon! Thank you, Morgan, for encouraging me to take myself seriously enough to make this happen. I have always wanted a short-run talk show, and 2025 is the year I do all the weird stuff I want to do, which is why I have also been designing kurtas and bookcases, making terrible drawings, and playing really terrible music. I have always believed that I needed to be an artist with a clear trajectory of doing one thing only, but the way my neurology is set up, I do the the things that bring me joy regardless of their prestige or visibility. As my 40th birthday approaches, my only goal is to be more fully myself which in so many ways is freeform and enthusiatic and easily overtaken by small interesting things … like that time a few weeks ago when I feel in love with Pick’s Theorem.

In the past few weeks, I have spent some time in Vancouver and Montreal installing and giving talks. I was able to reconnect with an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in over six years, and it was quite the ride to try to squeeze in all of our life updates into a lunch meal! Thank you to Dark Opacities Lab (hi Balbir!!!!) for having Maryam Kashani and me in February! Despite our very emotional conversation about death, grief, surveillance, and accountability, it was so much fun to be in such a warm space. Concordia, bring me back to Montreal!

In two weeks, it will be the second anniversary of my nan’s death. I hope that lady is doing well. She is now with her two daughters and husband and there is some relief in knowing that. In January, during the LA fires, which Alhamdulillah, my nan’s South Central home was saved from, my mother and I began to clean out her room. My mom found a bunch of family reunion booklets with addresses, photographs, family mottos, and recipes. With that new information, I have built up this speculative family tree of over 400 people going as far back as Scotland, the origin of my paternal family’s enslavers. I also got my hands on two thick books about this family and am looking forward to traveling to Anne Arundel in the winter to look at city records and visit their mansions.

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Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more about the newsletter rhythm here.

☺️ Hello!

Table of Contents:

1. 🏠 Back in Brooklyn!

2. 🕸️ Primitive Hypertext (after Octavia Estelle Butler): The “Alien” Wow! Signal, AI-powered Conspiracy Theory Generator, and Eggs, Human Eggs “Woo Sperm” in a Post-Copulation Battle, Ancient Ritual of “Glacier Mating” in Pakistan’s Highlands, Ice Cores Hold Trapped Air with A Story, Glycerol Help Make the Perfect Bubble, Water Anoles, Alkali Flies, and Some Water Beetles Use Underwater Bubbles to Survive

3. 🐇 🕳️ Another Rabbit Hole: Anti-Bubbles and Sonoluminescence

   KJR Studios: Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

1. 🏠 Back in Brooklyn!

2. 🕸️ Primitive Hypertext (after Octavia Estelle Butler)

As a reminder, the Primitive Hypertext offerings are now modeled after Harper Magazine’s Findings, which focuses on “scientific progress—good, bad, or simply strange.” However, my version will include anything that piques my curiosity in a given week — which most likely will be science-adjacent...but not like always, but mostly 😬 😬

This Week! 20 January 2025

The Ohio State University Big Ear radio telescope detected the Wow! Signal in 1977, becoming one of the most noteworthy examples of alien intelligence. However, a non-peer-reviewed paper published on arXiv last year “hypothesize[d] that the Wow! Signal was caused by a sudden brightening of the hydrogen line in these clouds triggered by a strong transient radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR).” When prompting Bitlife, an AI-powered conspiracy theory text generator with the word “eggs,” we are given “[s]ome conspiracy theorists believe that eggs, particularly chicken eggs, hold mystical properties that are linked to alien civilizations.” In 2017, Joe Nadeau, principal scientist at the Pacific Northwest hypothesized that sexual selection happens after copulation when the egg attempts to “woo sperm” instead of “passively” awaiting random fertilization. Other fertilization approaches are found amongst farmers in Pakistan's highlands of Baltistan who are racing against climate change by attempting to produce “glacier babies” using an ancient ritual of “glacier mating” of mixing chunks of white glaciers (presumed to be female) with black or brown glaciers (presumed to be male) in order to create a new water source for farming. At the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, scientists store ice cores whose bubbles of Greenland air from more than two millennia can provide details on the progression of climate issues. Scientists have developed an optimized recipe for making giant bubbles which requires that the surface-active agent (a chemical compound that reduces the surface tension between two substances) must not be too high, the bubble solution must include long and flexible polymer chains, and glycerol provides stability and resistance to evaporation. Possibly to escape predators, water anoles, or semiaquatic lizards produce a bubble behind its nostrils that allows it to remain breathing underwater for 20 minutes. Alongside Lindsey Swierk’s water anoles research, other scientists have found that the alkali fly, (Ephydra hians) uses superhydrophobicity to create a bubble of air around its body (but not encasing the fly's eyes) while underwater in Mono Lake, California. And some water beetles form a temporary bubble to carry needed oxygen while underwater.

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Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

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Read more about the newsletter rhythm here.

☺️ Hello!

Table of Contents:

1. 🗑️ What was that?

2. ✍🏽 1,000+ words

   1. 😔 The Apology Essay Genre

   2. 📋 2024 Round-up

1. 🗑️ What was that?

I thought I cried a lot in 2023, but 2024 incubated a different awareness. There is a spiritual wickedness. And before you get annoyed about me moralizing, I do not care. Something is not right, and that “not right” seems most visible in the uneven distribution of capital and empathy. But this “not right” also shows up in our interpersonal relationships as disposability, conflict avoidance, and straight-up deceit.

2023 taught me how to cry.

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Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

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Read more

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more about the newsletter rhythm here.

☺️ Hello!

Table of Contents:

1. 🏜️ A Quick Update: Deserts + Soft Life Experiences

2. 💬 Q & A: What is your favorite hidden reference that you’ve made in a work?

3. ✍🏽 Writing Prompt: OuLiPo N + 7

4. 📸 Photograph of the Week: Jetblue Mint

5. 🎫 Reminders about paid subscriber perks!

1. 🏜️🍦 A Quick Update: Deserts + Soft Life Experiences

My house is a mess, but I am fully moved in! I am headed to Joshua Tree for a short residency in a few hours. I will be studying the physics of pressure and the law of superposition! Then, I am back in NYC to start work and prepare for a few shows. I am looking forward to the dry heat!

Oh! So I rode first class from JFK to LAX by accident, I think. Somehow, I was in JetBlue Mint. Someone else booked my ticket so I don’t know what magic they did, but it was a glorious experience. I do not treat myself to luxury experiences; I am very frugal. With a mix of housing instability trauma and guilt about doing nice things for myself as the world continues to devolve into the most wicked iteration I have had the displeasure of living through, I will skimp on nice things for myself. Well! After this cute little trip, I want to enjoy more nice and soft experiences. My first attempt: I booked a roomette for my train to Palm Springs! I will keep y’all posted. I think it will be cute! I have always wanted to do this, but just didn’t?

And I have a Delta voucher for an international trip I canceled last year! Where should I go?

2. 💬 Q & A: What is your favorite hidden reference that you’ve made in a work?

You can submit a question here or complete this form! Questions are due on Saturdays by 5 pm EST.

Dear Kameelah,

What is your favorite hidden reference that you’ve made in a work?

Thanks,

O

Hi O,

Now, if I share the answer to this, then it is no longer hidden! I do like the spirit of this question which I (choose to) read as “how to preserve some interiority in your practice? And now can you share it with us!” There are easter eggs throughout all of my work not for the purpose of obtuse or performative illegibility, but

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Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

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Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more about the newsletter rhythm here.

☺️ Hello!

Table of Contents:

1. 🏡 🔑 A Quick Update: On Birthdays, Moving, and Library School

2. 💬 Q & A: The Grammar of Geology and Dance for the Video Installation Decisions

3. ✍🏽 Writing Prompt: The River Meditation from Pauline Oliveros

4. 📸 Photograph of the Week: Abulis Religious & Spiritual Cultural Store

5. 🎫 Reminders about paid subscriber perks!

1. 🏡 🔑 A Quick Update

August 1st at 11:41 pm was my 39th birthday. I spent my birthday at home with my mom hiding from the heat. Birthdays are hard for me, but this year felt different. I am still recovering from COVID and earlier illness this summer, so I wanted a day of rest. I took about three naps, had a slice of bean pie, talked to my two dear friends, hugged my mama, looked for cats to foster before realizing that texture aversion was going to prevent me from cleaning up after a pet, then took more naps before finally doing a little reading. It was such a sweet day.

The quiet celebration ended because I need to leave my apartment by this Wednesday. My mother and I have been packing my one-bedroom apartment to move to my new place for the past few days. I am overwhelmed and want to cry, but I must get this done. Send prayers. There is a bit more change than is manageable right now, but I am leaning on the consistency of good sleep and my mom reminding me to eat. Today marks the 70% point of getting everything in boxes and pushed to one corner. The last thing is a closet I have not opened in years 😂. Moving is really emotional given the housing instability I’ve experienced as a child. I am excited about my new home.

The move marks a moment of clarity for me. I stayed in the apartment I lived in with my ex-husband because it was rent-stabilized, but also because there was an element of needing to “prove” that I could heal in the same walls of so much abuse. I stayed for three years after the divorce and four years through a terrible marriage. My landlord emailed me on my mother’s birthday saying that a two-bedroom opened in my building. I immediately said yes. Since June 4, I have been carrying this ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach because the anxiety, fear, and shame associated with this apartment, while unpleasant, was also familiar. My new place is about three times the size, and

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Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

Subscribe now

Read more about the newsletter rhythm here.

☺️ Hello!

Table of Contents:

1. 🤒 A Quick Update 🤢

2. 💬 Q & A: How to Design a Zine Curriculum!

3. ✍🏽 Writing Prompt: Bernadette Mayer

4. 🎫 Reminders about paid subscriber perks!

1. 🤒 A Quick Update 🤢

I went from a bizarre cold in Harstad to canceling my performance, book launch, and workshop in Los Angeles for my REDCAT show because of some weird gastro incident to getting COVID upon returning from Montpellier. My little brother said, “Yeah, I do not think your body is supposed to experience that many time zone changes in that short period; your body is just confused.” I am inclined to agree. I am supposed to be moving right now, but I am laid up newslettering and emailing horizontally. I am switching between episodes of Fringe, Veep, The Office, and some random true crime show. Delerium has set in several times and tomorrow, I am hoping for an upright day tomorrow!

2. 💬 Q & A: Designing a Zine Curriculum

You can submit a question here or complete this form! Questions are due on Saturdays by 5 pm EST.

Dear Kameelah, 

I was on vacation in Brooklyn this summer when I stumbled upon the Old Stone House and the surrounding gardens. I was inspired by the care and reflection with which the gardens had been designed and planted. Every aspect of the garden had been kindly considered, from the macro to the meso to the micro. The garden felt cared for and treasured. As a teacher, I immediately decided I wanted that level of care for my curriculum. On the way out, I saw a flyer for a Booklyn Zine workshop in which you were listed as the curriculum designer. I went down the happiest rabbit holes, inspired by your work and inspiration. I am in the process of setting up my curriculum for next year. I will teach grade 8 Language Arts at Stone Ridge School for the Sacred Heart (I see you are an Atherton alum). My priority this year is adding joy, creativity, and expressiveness to my curriculum, and I plan to use zines throughout the year. For my inspiration, bell hooks’ Belonging: A Culture of Place and your art installation “No Instructions for Assembly, Activation VII” are wellsprings that bring joy to my heart. Still, I am grappling with where to begin, and am treading water amidst all this inspiration, looking for my footing to push off and get going.  I will be using the Brooklyn Education Book to create our zines. Still, I wonder if I need to assemble a zine library as example texts for my students and if you recommend a particular starting place. I am sorry for the length of this question. Your work and your ethos are so inspiring to me and giving me new life as a teacher.  

In gratitude, 

Sally Ingram 

Hi Sally!

Yes, I did have the pleasure of building the Booklyn Zine Curriculum with my consulting business, Orange Tangent Study! I love everything about the learning process and designing the educative materials for practioners is both challenging and exciting.

My first thought: The narrower, the better! Right now, you have too many choices so my main suggestion is to get as specific as possible. I would love to teach a zine class in a case study format where we focus on a specific zine, zine author, distro, or region.

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