‘it just vibes with my brain”
Contribution by Tracian Meikle in collaboration with Ariana Rose.
For most of my life I saw myself as someone who plays things safe. I want radical change but didn’t think I’d be on the front lines. In reality, I’m closer to living that life than I thought. I’ve walked away from jobs because I couldn’t do what was required. I’ve made risky decisions when I didn’t have other options. I’m glad there are people who can't do things the normal way. It’s necessary for new kinds of lives to be lived. It pushes against normalcy, and away from a standard that shouldn't have to exist.
When people ask me why I quit my PhD in Urban Studies as I was writing my thesis, I say: ‘I quit because it felt like trying to squeeze water from a dry sponge" and I mean it. I struggled to write my Bachelor's honours thesis, my Master's thesis was an experimental collaborative project and as soon as I could — I switched from my role as Research officer (where I was required to write a paper) to Education Outreach officer. This was at my first job after university.
For others, not writing doesn’t create a quandary, but I deal in the making and sharing of knowledge, and writing continues to be the major currency within the knowledge economy. But the questions laid out in Everyday Priorities ask me to think otherwise. To ask; what other forms of exchange might be possible for someone who is not a maker? How might I allow for other forms of accessibility by centering my difficulties, rather than compensating for them? What might be discovered when one chooses to follow a different path to a destination?
So when I was invited to contribute a text, I thought how could I write without writing (or at least minimal writing)? I chose to honor my preferred form of sharing — the conversation — and contacted a longtime collaborator and friend; Ariana Rose, to explore with me what it means to write and not write. Ariana is a researcher on neurodivergence in Black women and has done work on Black community building as practicing the otherwise. She understands that for many, particularly Black and/or neurodivergent people, navigating dominant knowledge dissemination norms comes with a cost. This conversation brought together two different relationships to writing as an exercise to explore how neurodivergence presents differently, and to imagine a world where multiple affordances allows for multiple ways of doing.
What follows is an abridged transcript of a conversation that took place between Ariana and I in March 2026. Similar to the conversation itself, it is a collaborative one, first made concise and edited by Ariana and then further edited by me. This combined effort of Ariana and I also offers another possible accessibility node — that of collaboration, of not being forced to do it alone.
Tracian: The topic is how not to write about writing. I’d love for us to talk about our different approaches to writing and process. What's interesting is that I'm choosing to not write and having a conversation with someone who would have made the opposite choice. Someone for whom writing is one of their main ways of sense-making.
Ariana: I see a lot of that refusal in conversations I’ve had with people for research. People choosing something more authentic instead. I think it’s interesting because that refusal becomes possible as a result of knowing yourself better and changing the narrative. Moving away from beliefs like 'I'm not disciplined enough' or 'I'm lazy' and asking, “Why should I have to do this in the first place? Where does this come from?” That awareness allows you to then say, in an informed way, “Actually, I choose to do this differently, and it's fine.”
Tracian: Thanks for saying that. Audre Lorde keeps coming to mind. ‘Uses of the Erotic' is one of the foundational texts for how I work. She says this feeling of knowing something feels right, I know this is what I want to do, this desire that pushes you to action, eventually helps you create a more humane world. I try to accept that I may find some things difficult. There are people who enjoy writing, but there are some people who don't. And I'm one of those people.
Ariana: That process of self-awareness and self-acceptance is what allows you to do things differently.
What did you feel when you found out you had to write this? And how did you decide you weren't going to write?
Tracian: When I get a writing assignment, I feel trepidation. Part of me wants to meet the challenge. Writing is one of the more accepted ways these kinds of ideas get put out there. But there's another part of me that wants to find another route to put my ideas in the world. Do I have to write in order to say the things I want to say, in the spaces I want to be in?
Ariana: Do you think writing would actually be good for you?
Tracian: Whenever I do enjoy writing, it's like a dance. It's like making a song, and you can hit a crescendo. You can know when the words punch, when they have an impact. I want to write in a way that truly reflects a feeling. That spillage onto paper for some people is how speaking works for me. The more I speak the more I understand what I'm saying and I know whether or not it feels like truth.
Ariana: I get that. Writing for me is very similar to collaging. At work I have literally hundreds of pages of data from interviews, probably a hundred articles highlighted and annotated. I have a lot of ideas about what I'm noticing, usually brain-dumped into documents. I have all these pieces, these materials. And writing is the process of figuring out what wants to be said and contextualising it, helping it make sense within a bigger picture. You have to figure out what the core themes are, what the gaps are, which theories work together, what adds value.
And then there's the structure. Writing for me is also like detangling natural hair. The first draft is usually like trying to pass a comb through the first time. It doesn't go well. It's really just an approximation of what I want to say. Every time you work through a draft the comb moves through a little easier. And knowing when it's done… that's a matter of feeling.
Tracian: You sound like an artist talking about a painting. For some artists, they can look at a painting and they just know it's done. For others, the painting is never done. You also have to have boundaries around when to move on.
Ariana: Exactly. I could endlessly seek inputs so I impose boundaries and a rhythm on myself in the form of a writing schedule to make sure I stay on track. I also allow myself to pivot. Being honest about my energy in that moment and honoring that despite feeling like I should be doing something else. Giving myself that permission has been really helpful.
Tracian: Would you write if you had a choice to produce this knowledge another way?
Ariana: Yeah, probably. I have language processing difficulties. Reading is more possible than listening. My brain does better when I can see the words. Although I’m trying out other forms more and more and trying to put my creative work out there more. I think it’s the alignment with my cognitive processing style. It vibes with my brain.
Tracian: Oh my God. It just vibes with my brain. I think that's it. Can we just allow people to do more of the things that vibe with their brains? We should be allowing for the possibility of more. It's about interrogating whether writing has to be the only way in which we do certain things. What would it mean to explore what's possible otherwise? What else can we make room for?
Ariana: What you're describing, deciding not to write, choosing differently – if you can't do something one way, it may present an opportunity that opens up other possibilities. What it takes is someone saying, “I don't want to do it this way.” If you push against something, the people who come after you will have more options because of your insistence.
Tracian: I feel drawn to showing us to ourselves. To help us know who we are and understand that who we are is who we're meant to be. There's a lot of power in that. How do we create and do differently? Can we understand how we are and where we come from and what we carry? My way of doing is bringing knowledge to people through gathering and speaking. It's almost preacherly.
Ariana: Yeah. There's definitely a difference in what you and I are called to do. You host healing circles, reading and discussion circles, panels, workshops. That's not my ministry. I think my role is to see things and articulate them. To show patterns and mechanisms and make people interrogate what they think they know. I prefer to learn things on my own and then share.
But if you can insist on the ways that make other options possible – that's your otherwise. In doing otherwise you get to be authentic. And everyone around you benefits too because what you do has your unique energetic signature. If you express naturally, your message will be more potent than if you drag what you're trying to say through a process that wasn’t designed for you. We should all honour our uniqueness.
Tracian: Thank you. I don't HAVE to write.
Everyday Priorities – Art, Technology and Accommodations is created and curated by Metro54 and M-Cult. The project commissioned works by artists Flis Holland and Joy Mariama Smith and is organised in collaboration with the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux and supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland and the Mondriaan Fonds, Netherlands.
Tracian Meikle is a curator, educator, and moderator whose practice centres on creating conditions for Black collective liberation. She was a moderator for two editions of Everyday Priorities. Tracian's own thinking happens best in speech: in real time, in community, in the room. Writing, for her, has always carried a specific and significant dread. This piece is her attempt to do something about that.
Ariana Rose is a PhD researcher in Political Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Her work focuses on the mental health of Black women with ADHD and autism and how they navigate Dutch healthcare and everyday life within postcolonial structures. She looks at themes of uncertainty, vulnerability, and dis/trust through lenses of time, faith, and feeling. She is also a collage artist, dancer, and DJ.