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lore:
i’ve always wanted to build my own beautiful home. i’ve always wanted to build something that expresses my origins, my history, my daily life, my idiosyncrasies, my dreams, my spirituality, my politics, my values, my cultures—the beauty of my humanity. i’ve wanted to build something that expressed how i am both shaped by and shape the social dynamics of our shared world. i’ve wanted to build something that expressed my desire for benevolent connection; something that expressed my way of connecting.
home is a place where you can be totally yourself. a place where you can relax, rest, idle. a shelter in this world of rain. a calm place in the sea. a sensual connective temple. a place with no agendas. home is the atmosphere of detoxification and recovery. i’ve always wanted to build a home that expresses what ‘home’ is to me. and it is in this home that i’ve desired to connect, to invite others over to meander and play.
when i first started building bon bon spirale, in spring of 2023, i was hundreds of episodes deep into the show One Piece. the more i watched it the more i realized i wanted to become a pirate and build my own ship. the main character’s dream is to be the freest he can be, to adventure with his friends, and to delight in existence. i too wanted a ship that could become my home to sail the seas of Life with, that i could care for myself and my village within, that could express my values, and that could root me in my core dream (to be quintessentially myself, to express the fullest force of myself before i die, and to be sovereign).
pirates are seen as the rebellious & heretical characters in the world of One Piece. many of these pirates are regarded as heretics because they are following a dream that happens to be disruptive and subversive to the status quo—dreams that are philosophically pushing boundaries and that inherently rebel against passively suicidal politics that only favor the elites. as one character says in the show, raising your own pirate flag is a symbol of the belief that nothing is impossible. by raising your flag, you commit to fighting for the possibilities you believe in, not matter how they conflict with the dogma of the status quo, just like pirates do.
the status quo of the society that socialized me does not incentivize operating how i innately operate. the status quo incentivizes seeing life as a series of tasks, agendas, and achievements; hustle, speed, endless activity, endless force, shallow processing, fatigue, numbness, overwork—simply put: shallow & always active = more money quickly. to do things lovingly and carefully typically requires slowing down and deeper processing. but to the status quo that = less money, getting beaten by competition, and so on. the status quo only rewards “more money.” and survival is directly dependent on “more money.” the status quo tries to get people to be more active, shallow, fatigued by complex trauma and little to know recovery time, fatigued by low quality food, low quality air, fatigued and stressed by having to compete with whatever is most forceful and active to survive.
so, i decided to build my own ship! i decided to create a world that invites others to experience my point of view—the philosophies, visions, and imagination of someone who’s operating system is 80% dependent (at minimum) on deep processing, parasympathetic idling, meandering, pointlessness, being without an agenda, intuition, somatic & erotic intelligence, quiet, solitude, recovery, slowing down, cyclic energy, logintidinal studies, observing, absorbing, increased sensitivity, communicating with a vast interior life, and so on.
i named my ship “bon bon spirale” because the name reminded me of desserts! the sweetness of “bon bon” is paired with my love of spirals and what they can symbolize—the spiralic nature of life, the Spiralisme genre practiced by Haitian author Frankétienne (a formative teacher in my life), spirals as sacred geometry, and so on. during the genesis of bon bon spirale, i was also spending a lot of time studying the history of confections & sweet treats (especially generationally passed down practices) and dessert-based leisure activities. i began to think about my own lineage and the need for repair through a commitment to reconiling with becoming habituated to suffering and the destruction of beauty. i fell in love with the idea that there is a social role where one is solely tasked with bringing sweetness to others. from a young age, i’ve loved to study spiritual philosophies and practices from all over the planet so this sweet social role reminded me of monastic practices and rituals of bringing great joy and happiness to others.
being able to connect the spiritual and material by seeing this throughline between confectioners and monks, in hindsight, was a big “aha!” moment in my creative practice. both represented a lifestyle that i felt, subconsciously at first, drawn to.
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in the narrative world of bon bon spirale there are a lot of characters and archetypes. in order to materialize any idea for a studio project, i need to write about it first as though i were (what i like to call) a “slice of life fantasy” writer;
some of these characters/archtypes are a monastery of rose bearers, love dwellers,practicers of paradise. there’s also the zombification resistance front. there’s philospher-poets who meet at a mountaintop teahouse to laugh and chat into the night about their latest curiosities.
these characters emphasize a world whwere the spiritual and material are linked through a lifestyle that includes daily ritual reconnections with the joys of being divinity incarnated [3. arianna felix]. rose bearers, for example, are characters that both literally and metaphorically bring roses to others.
“love dwellers” are characters that represnt an understanding of the power of home and homemaking. love dwellers understand that we are each other’s shelter in this world of rain. the homes (habits, ideologies, and lifestyles) we make together protect and advocate for what is most important to us. for me, that’s my emotional, spiritual, mental and, material wellness. for me, that’s my sovereignty. dwelling in Love protects and advocates for just that.
the “practicers of paradise” represent my philosophy is that heaven is on earth, wherever you are in the present moment, right beneath your feet—paradise comes down to choice and paradise is ours to practice.
the rose bearers, love dwellers, and practicers of paradise resist zombification and soul erosion by protecting the expression of the true self and supporting the true self’s needs. this need to prioritize the expression of the true self is what gave way to the character “zombification resistance front.” all of this comes back to Love consciousness which speaks the language of mysticism. i find incarnation most enjoyable when we all share our unqiue expression with each other and, by doing so, affirm the ability to derive power from the inclusion of the Whole rather than always deriving it from the need for an enemy or opposition (as is the current status quo).
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bon bon spirale is complex and morphing. i say that bon bon spirale moonlights as a creative studio because, first and foremost, it is my pirate ship. internally, it’s my home, my ship to sail the seas of Life with. i like to translate this into form as a creative studio because in the external world, i most often fall into the realm of arts, beauty, and culture no matter how protean and multifarious my creative pursuits may be. with age, i learned that i needed to have both a stable home base to root my ideas (bon bon spirale) and a lot of room for adventure and experimentation to explore the many ways my root can be expressed (the varied creative projects done for the studio).
this studio is a rough translation of my experience being myself in this world and all that experience inspires me to create. i create because i love Life, i love the Earth, and i love being human–relentlessly!