As this post publishes, so does our latest episode of the Move Over Mother Theresa podcast ft. @teadayblogs (found here in Spotify, Apple & Youtube). Fun fact: the show was recently featured by Apple on their homepage - so it’s now objectively fantastic.
Meet Tea….
As an homage to this insidiously charismatic creative firefly, I’ve decided to punctuate this article with excerpts from my inner voice that whisper me artistic death threats as I write. Ayomitide Adesanya, Tide, ‘Tea Day’, or ‘Tea’ to friends, and @teadyblogs to friends online, has been on one journey and is now on another. The first, a trip from working class roots via parental expectations, a flirt with finance, and a falling out with Ad land. Her destination? Content creation. The second is a bounce between both love and fear, familiar to anyone who pursues creativity with intention. And so it feels fitting to lift the curtain on my own relationship with love and fear, as told by the voice in my head, whilst I journey through the creative process of writing this article and introduce you to Tea and why we’ve fallen in love with her.
Inner Voice - Tom? That. Is. Shit. Does it even make sense? So you want readers to jump from one narrative to another every time you write about what I’m saying to you. Poo, bum, wee. Poo bum, wee. I’d be surprised if they haven’t left already. “I’ve got nothing to do”, they’d think as they head off to do it instead. You don’t even know what you’re going to write next, do you? I bet you’ll try one of your wanky metaphors, probably from a book you’ve never read.
Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy in the 14th century. It’s a three part story and the first two, ‘Dante’s Inferno - The Descent through Hell’ and ‘Purgatorio - The Ascent through Purgatory’, map out as a sort of mythical framework for Tea’s two journeys.
Inner Voice - And…. no more readers. Bell end.
Tea Day’s Inferno
The story of Dante’s Inferno starts with him waking up in a dark forest. It’s a pivot point in life having lost the right path or, frankly, having never really found it in the first place. Beasts of pride, lust and greed await, followed by a descendance through nine circles of hell that helps to find clarity on misguided desires and false motives - all in search of a way to act in truth from here on out. At rock bottom is Lucifer himself, frozen by cold heartedness and unable to stop Dante from climbing through the darkness to emerge under stars with renewed purpose.
It’s hard to spend time with Tea without thinking that she too has emerged under stars. In our recent MOMT podcast she talks about rejecting “learned helplessness”, a conventional path to financial security and advice even from loving and supportive parents. “Don’t do creativity. Don’t go down that route. There’s nothing there for you”, they would say. On then finding traditional work in the creative industry, as a working class girl she noted that “There’s a certain language in middle class spaces that keep working class kids out”. So she picked up some freelance work and journeyed on. Each step closing in on her truth. Each step passing someone she could have become - out walking their beast on a leash, thinking it’s a pet and not a pitfall.
Inner Voice - That last line is great, man. Shame about the rest. Please don’t mention Dante again.
Creativitio Purgatorio
For Dante, story two starts with the stars fading as the sun rises, and in front of him lies Mount Purgatory. We often hear “purgatory” as a place we get stuck in or condemned to, but this is an ascent not of punishment, but of purification.
The mountain is tiered with seven terraces, each a mini breakthrough themed almost as if taking direct inspiration from exactly the type of messaging Tea puts at the heart of her content. Terrace one is a progression from pride to humility. Terrace two turns envy into generosity. Then wrath to gentleness, sloth to zeal, greed to compassion, gluttony to temperance, and finally, lust to love.
At the mountain’s summit is ‘Earthly Paradise’. It’s an ultimate resolution, of sorts. Eternal creative peace in this metaphor, perhaps. But like all stories and exactly like the most overused cliche I can muster - it’s about the journey, not the destination. At least in non-fiction. A journey Tea, and all of us, are forever taking.
Inner Voice - Tie this analogy together, Tom. Wrap it up and make it pretty. The whole article depends on this next paragraph so don’t fuck it up. Spoiler: you will.
Dante is both author and protagonist, and so is Tea. They’re first person accounts of self discovery shared for the purpose of all person resonance. In a sense and unlike Dante, Tea is also publisher and distributor - the entire supply chain of how ideas travel from one person to another. Neither journeys are comedies in the modern sense of the word (although Tea is funny as f*ck). They are paths from difficulty to joy, shared for the benefit of others. Through art and through openness.
Inner Voice - Hey Tom. I’ve been tough on you and don’t get me wrong, this could have been better. Loads better, honestly. But I’m thinking of a post by Tea screaming the words “Create more than you consume”. Remember that? It’s good isn’t it? I’d love to see this in Tiktok’s terms of use - just imagine the whole world doing this. Or at least keeping it in mind as they doom scroll. Anyway, today you did this. So I want to say…. um…. you did… ok. Considering you’re, well, you. Know what I mean?