There is a magic that crackles in the open air when we reject the silence imposed by tyranny—a fierce, untamable joy that emerges when we step into the streets, or watch collective protest across the Holy Earth. This isn’t a meek or muted defiance; it is a boisterous, wild celebration that shatters the chains of oppression and awakens something ancient and indispensable within us.
Confronting oppression through mycelial disobedience shatters the quiet, its feral defiance unmoors us like a wild winds across naked skin. It births liberatory joy—raw, unstoppable, and free. It’s not just an act; it’s an invitation to wake from slumber, to dance in defiance, to unite in rebellion’s raucous song. When the people rise, disobedience and defiance ripple like echoing drums through forgotten forests, collective laughter and fierceness becomes a spell that unfetters the spirit, reminding us that true freedom lies in daring to defy.
In these moments, our anger transforms into an art form, our protest into poetry. It is as if we channel the feral, unyielding energy of the natural world—the way a storm untethers the anchored and transforms landscapes—to reclaim the spaces authoritarianism seek to hold captive. The sound of our laughter is not mere noise; it is the rhythmic beating of a drum, a summons to remember that we are alive, together.
This wild joy is not accidental. It is the result of a deliberate unmaking of the isolation and fear engineered by authoritarian power. Our public disobedience is an invitation—a call to wake from the slumber of imposed coercion, to dance in defiance of structures designed to keep us docile. Every act of rebellion, every shared moment of uproarious joy, becomes a tiny rupture in the façade of control.
Laugh like the crows in the trees who know the strongman’s power is paper-thin. Gather in the streets, in the forests, in the ruins of their crumbling control. Dance hard. Dance in a way that makes the earth remember you. Like the women in the Iranian uprisings, tearing off their hijabs and whirling in the open, their hair catching the wind, their defiance as natural as wildfire. Like the Polish resistance fighters during WWII, who threw clandestine cabarets in bombed-out basements, using satire as a dagger against fascism. Like the woman who, during the George Floyd protests, stood naked before a line of riot police, legs spread, a living Sheela na Gig—the ancient crone of raw, embodied defiance—offering them a vision of something they could not control, something they could not unsee.
Weave a spell with your hands. Cook feasts in defiance of starvation politics, like the Chilean women under Pinochet who turned communal kitchens into survival networks. Paint over their propaganda, like the Palestinian artists covering the West Bank Wall in visions of return. Turn censorship into a song, like the Democratic senators rallied singing ‘We shall Overcome’ when Senator Al Green was censured and the chairman had to call for recess silenced, making it impossible for oppression to sit comfortably in its chair.
Turn their image into effigy, their fear into farce. Like the carnival in Cologne Germany, with towering effigies of the trifecta of oligarchs paraded through the streets, satirically nailing the absurdity of these leaders and their kleptocracy or the Parisian resistance fighters who staged elaborate burials for the Nazis, complete with satirical eulogies, exposing the absurd fragility behind fascist theatrics.
Let your joy be mycelial. Spread it underground, beneath the surveillance, beneath the control, let it move in whispers and bursts of color. Leave poems tucked into library books. Plant sunflowers in vacant lots.
This is the wild magic of refusal. It is the potent reminder that joy is not a distraction but a weapon—a vital force in the fight against oppression. When we embrace disobedient joy, we reject the narrative that fear should dictate our actions, that isolation is the price of survival. Instead, we embody a collective heartbeat that resonates with the ancient rhythms of the natural world—a world where every creature, every tree, every stream dances to its own untamed tune.
So let us dare to laugh, to sing, and to dance in defiance. Let it be the spark that ignites a wildfire of liberation—a celebration of the untamed self that no regime can silence. In the echo of our laughter, in the shared pulse of our collective stand, we find the truth: that in refusing to be broken, we are free.
Where can you be the first note in this liberatory symphony? Where will you dare to laugh in the face of despair? Let your wild, unbridled joy become the beacon that calls others to rise.
