Wake Work

Over the course of three months I have traveled to two states and three different countries. London (current home), Florida (first home), Virginia (my father’s last home), Cape Town (an interesting place), and Panama (a friend’s home).

Love has followed and carried me everywhere. In Cape Town I am confronted with the power of aliveness, how even mania can be transformed and mutated into propelling force – how it can be a strategic tool required for some of us to take leaps of faith. I am excited to explore this idea further in other works given that I have now experienced its proven results.

Passage, Mfuleni Township Cape Town South Africa, Nov 2025

In Virginia I faced the reality of death, wiped my father’s blood off of a wooden crate holding the medications he took for too long and replaced them with memorabilia. On this land we arranged his cremation, searched for answers and found more trauma. We ate all the time, cried and held each other as much as we could tolerate. All throughout, his now widowed German shepherd wagged her tail as if to say. “Come on, we can still rejoice and be glad in it”.

In Florida I was reminded of the swamp in which I come from, the heat, the bugs the lizards. My mother tries to pigeon hold me back into the role I played as caretaker in my family. It is a common story; an all too easy habit of forgetting yourself as person socialized as a woman. We often mold ourselves into the shapes that validation disguises as love. Therefore, the spirit of self neglect was ever present, when everyone else was so loud and grabbing at their needs, I was used to standing back, observing the flow of things, waiting for scraps of attention or leaving to find it elsewhere. This time I did not have the option of playing small. Grief made me less tolerant and more bold. To ignore it triggered a thudding, aching pain in my chest. I googled it several times — heartbreak syndrome.

Dad’s 6th or 7th Grade Class Photo,106 Wacker School p.3-p.z, Oct 1970

Now, the discomfort around my heart comes from deeper breaths, an opening, once a void, is being strengthened.

I carried the favorites of my dad's objects back to London, wondering if I’d still make the trip to Panama, an expensive ticket I had bought in the spirit of mania. For two weeks in London, a part from one evening with friends, I wallowed in the grey. My wife and I had just moved to a new flat and I refused to unpack, leaving it messy and confusing, not unlike the circumstances in which we found ourselves in. I did nothing but attempt to work out and watch Love Island, the exercise mat was the only place tears would come out properly and trash reality TV is universally healing. I didn’t cook for myself, I barely showered. I however (and still do) speak to my father’s favorite niece everyday to keep from spinning all the way out.

I was irritable, distressed and undecided on whether it was fair or responsible to take ‘another vacation” (although as an artist, I am always working on something). On the night before the flight, I sought counsel, pulled tarot cards, flipped a coin, and decided not to go. I cried and began to believe that some dreams just don’t come true. My wife, witnessing it all decided for me that I needed to go. Rushing me into the shower and packing my bags at 6am for a flight at 10am. By the grace of God I managed to get there 30 mins early. I’m pretty sure I came in my pants with joy thinking – ‘things are aligning. Something good is going to happen. Good can still happen’.

The Everyday, Orlando Florida, Jan 2026

Panama… was an actual dream come true. Every single day was perfect. I didn’t get sick, I laughed constantly, my body began to remember (not just recognize) what it feels like to be alive. In Bocas my heart began to expand and my breath started to emerge from my belly. A new friend gave me singing lessons and we harmonized across islands.

I told my signing friend about the wake, and how the water in which we traveled on holds for 260 million years the salt found in the blood of our ancestors. I heard them in Carnival, spirits whipping around metal poles, conveyed the terrifying reality of colonial history – I learned much.

Everyday we ate watermelon and boiled eggs with fresh coconut water from Fren the fruit seller and his wife. I swam in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the down stream of El Chorro de Cerro Azul. We danced, I learned to salsa. The spirit of limerence distracted me from grief, god delivered me. I met my patriarchal spirits and set boundaries. We ate some more, had fresh seafood, sweet coconut rice, avocado, plantain and the best natural chocolate for dessert. We cuddled on bus rides to Colon, to Chame and back home. It was so warm I woke up with stains of sweat right where my heart was learning to beat again. I was completely affirmed, in my strength, beauty and value. I was seen on multiple dimensions, led, held and inspired.

I arrived back home with messages, ideas and motivation. Here we are, preparing ourselves for the thick of it, the thick of living hard and beautiful lives, pointing each other in the direction of more of it. This wake work (Sharpe) is not over, I am doing it in bits.

I Show Myself the Wake, Bocas Del Toro Panama, Feb 2026

Sharpe asks:

“How might we stay in the wake with and as those whom the state positions to die ungrievable deaths and live lives meant to be unlivable?”

As I grieve my impulse says the answer is find healing outside of Babylon. To create international class solidarity, nomadic systems, and new healing/challenging experiences. To share refuge in each other’s homes.

Shape says:

“I want In the Wake to declare that we are Black peoples in the wake with no state or nation to protect us, with no citizenship bound to be respected, and to position us in the modalities of Black life lived in, as, under, despite black death: to think and be and act from there.

It is my particular hope that the praxis of the wake and wake work, the theory and performance of the wake and wake work, as modes of attending to Black life and Black suffering, are imagined and performed here with enough specificity to attend to the direness of the multiple and overlapping presents that we face; it is also my hope that the praxis of the wake and wake work might have enough capaciousness to travel and do work that I have not here been able to imagine or anticipate.”

I say:

In the face of death

What is success

What is failure

What purpose does fear serve

Who knows

We restart again

Shall I give way to the tide

How to care in the wake

With warmth

To wait for the next invitation

Or to fall away, to tragedy

No one cares

Says the fear – thinking of harsher realities

It is integral to keep in mind

Says the fear of God

Sometimes I think it is a thin straight line

To the “top”

One misstep, you tumble, you drop

To the bottom of the barrel

The same Black wayside hole

Thinking about tomorrow

Takes my breath away

Please God don’t also take my brothers…

Breathe

Remember to breathe

From your belly not your chest

Relax — Everything

Start from here

Upon my return to London spring begins to bud. During my layover in Madrid I meet a small baby faced Colombian woman, traveling to the city for her clinical doctorates programme. She takes my number and we keep in contact. When I struggle to leave the house in the days to come, I am reminded of her singing Lonely by Akon behind me in line for our flight. She wants to meet up with me. I pull an Adinkra card to quale my decision paralysis.

Sankofa.

Remember the past; and how many times you have been in the same position, questioning whether or not to make a change, to be in the world despite everything. If fear is of God then we must push through it. As I type now it is nearly time to meet her in Camden. Perhaps my Nomadic Systems is already at (wake) work. We must journey with our hearts open to find out.

Until next time,

Ariel N. Collier