Today we’d like to introduce you to Chasejamison Spears.
Chasejamison, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My mind, body, and subconscious selves were being shaped in my mother’s womb between the winter of 1997 and spring of 1998. I might be biased, but I think this was an unprecedented era of creative storytelling. I didn’t end up with any siblings, so instead I grew up alongside unique and definitive projects that became well known as fluid hybrids of their genres. Including, but not limited to:
Blade (Black militant half-vampire)
The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill (musical memoir about the meaning of love)
A Bug’s Life (cartoon commentary on classism from nature’s perspective)
Aquemini (afro futuristic hip-hop)
Sphere (Shoutouts to Samuel LJ. underwater speculative alien scenario)
& a ton more that I have a lifetime to explore. Many of these concepts, especially the blockbuster films of ‘98, were defined by disaster. From Armageddon to Godzilla, a majority of the ‘what if’ scenarios were geared towards negative outcomes and outlasting them. Survival was the main character. Inventive endings would dive deeply into the pieces of ourselves we lost or gained (or both) in order to maintain a human presence on a changing earth.
I think that as a society, we were considering so many things at once; space travel, and what type of beings may exist in the deep ocean, and all of these possibilities that are equally interesting and terrifying. This opened the collective mind of humanity, as well as many doors for even more imaginative art forms to manifest in the future. And it just so happened that around that time, I came into this earth. 28 trips around the sun later, and I am writing a climate fiction trilogy that combines every crazy movie I’ve ever seen with all of my back of mind ideas. Through this process, I’ve been thinking about the power of SPECULATION. The ability to not only predict, but also encourage futuristic outcomes.
Having survived many ends and beginnings, the viewers and listeners of dramatic speculation are forever changed. Have you ever walked out of a movie theater, or closed a book and felt it? That internal shift, the details that displayed a projection of a whole new world…
An inner eclipsing of what you thought you knew.
Although I can’t remember the experience firsthand, I do remember my mom’s story about her doomsday prepping with her daughter on her hip. That she transformed the small garage in our Hayward home into an end-of-days bunker. Canned food, pumped breast milk, filtered water. She stocked up on all these items and more, mostly because she adored Prince (I even attended one of their concerts in her womb). That one song 1999 predicted something horrible would happen before I could turn 3 – it was a sonic prophecy of everything ending all at once. And Prince’s advice was to dance like you knew its coming. So my mom shook her hips, bobbed her head, and prepared for the inevitable end to the best of her ability. I watched it all happen with brand new eyes, and now I wake up from dreams about worlds with purple skies and submarine shelters. I see no coincidence here.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Glimmer warning: my memory is a mermaid. My psychic, shape-shifting powers require water to activate. When I use the word ‘water’, I am referring to: rain, tears, the Nile River, cerebral spinal fluid, warm baths, cold showers, sweat. Oceans. Wombs. A cup of tea, made with real love, just might do the trick. Large and small bodies of water pull my retrospection deep below the surface of existentialism. My remembrance twists through tall waves, cycling through my life’s events and the emotions they create. This channeled subconsciousness pours out of my ears and onto my pillowcase at night.
For most of my life, I’ve swallowed these dreams. I found my closure by writing them neatly into a journal, closing it up, and placing it out of sight. Though lately, we’ve been witnessing global warming, seven (or more) active genocides, and a political system designed to collapse into chaos – all teetering over the edge. These realities rise, swell, and transform into cloudy skies in my mind. They force me to imagine, and to re-imagine; to speculate on alternative horizons. To share what ripples through my heart, guiding it forward. Sometimes, I do this best through retrospection. By asking what the relationship is between dreams and memory, memory and ancestry… ancestry and prophecy.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I believe that we (meaning you, me, and the communities that raised us) are floating between worlds. I believe that our imaginings bridge the two: these daily oppressive systems and the dreams that linger between our eyes are inextricably bound. Only great care and awareness can open our minds towards true self-determination. Endless possibilities expand from enlightenment and actualized creativity.
This is just one of a million reasons why Octavia Butler means so much to me, as a melanated sci-fi thinker, as a writer, and as a Black woman with weird dreams. If my memory is a mermaid, hers is the ocean it soars through. Her stories give me solace when this world threatens to consume me. Many people call her a prophet. I prefer the term literary scientist. Her pattern recognition predicted the wildfires in LA, Donald Trump, and the inevitable collapse of the Amerikkkan empire. And through the darkest of times, her characters believe in and shape change. They build networks of organic trust and small pockets of freedom in the midst of inevitable endings and beginnings. This must be why I faithfully return to the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Talents. They are blueprints. They open readers up to potential futures while acknowledging unavoidable pasts. In her own words, “It’s a way of trying to build tomorrow instead of cycling back into some form of yesterday.” (Butler 1998)
I day dream in Science Fiction. I imagine rivers flowing through space in the shapes of my ancestors. Petals spiraling down on the ashes of burned down police stations. A fish that learns to swim in the sky. A fish as a metaphor for intuition. A funeral for the last catfish to ever live. I try to imagine a tattoo that masks a map of our galaxy. Sometimes I sit back and think about what gravity would feel like upside down, or what true silence really sounds like. I dream of stopping the nightmares (the consequences of AI catching up to us, my tax dollars funding the colonization of space, water bankruptcies and never-ending genocides, storms/fires that feel drawn out along racial lines). I dream of a canvas of the future that is decidedly blank.
From 1998 to infinity..
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love the diversity of Miami, and the way the water blends into the horizon like watercolor.
My least favorite thing about Miami is probably the hold that capitalism has over almost every aspect of the city. But that’s my least favorite thing about everywhere.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cjamswriting3.my.canva.site/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/cjamswriting?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chasejamison-cj-manar-spears-73929a67/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@madamcjda3rdproductions333?si=XL8NZHVjq1YGzjDI
- Other: https://substack.com/@cjamswriting?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5cm8uj
