(Click play to hear me read this with a short intro)
All transitions are a new endeavor to trust myself a little deeper, a little more, with a little less hesitancy. There is a part of me that will seem to just decide, suddenly, decisively. But the truth is always more obscure than that. It’s always more true that I have been quietly observing things for a long time—I’m talking years—long before I pull the trigger on a thing I’m going to do, or start doing. It’s more like my ultimate decisions snap into place after I’ve been piecing things together little by little over time. Inputs from the outside world are coming in all the time, but I need to absorb, take it in and pull it apart inside of me to see what I’ll make of it eventually.
To those around me my sobriety seemed that way. Sudden, like ripping off a bandaid. And severe, maybe. But for me, it was a final, at-long-last stab of relief. It was finally burying the knife into the heart of the monster I tried to wrestle bare handed my whole life. Or so it felt. I had lost two family members to complications from drinking and drugs. Addiction is what I would call it. It’s insane how even that word can be debated endlessly in so many circles now. But just as individuals are complicated, so are communities, so are cultures and societies and worlds. All I know is, I got sober in what seemed like the drop of a hat. But that’s not how it happened at all. Things are not always — or ever, maybe — as they seem.
This is why conversations one-on-one matter. Because capitalism and social media and all the media, they have to make us all as homogenous as possible so they can sell us stuff, and now they even have us selling stuff to each other more and more each day. Everyone is a brand. Everything feels like a sales pitch. It so often feels like even the useful info is only being shared so it can be turned into a way to manipulate you into changing something about yourself. Where do you go when you want to feel safe from the constant bombardment of such a plastic, empty, vapid environment?
I’m all over the place today. But the thing is that in the very recent past, I would have used my scattered feelings as an excuse to not show up here, show up for myself or for you. I would like to do better. Not show up more polished but show up more often, just as I am. I have begun making art for hours and hours at a time each day. The time flies by, it’s amazing. And it’s terrible and silly and it’s gutting and raw and real and I absolutely have not felt this moved by creating, possibly ever.
I am making art using all kinds of supplies. Paper, paint, pencils, crayons, markers, words, colors, images, lines… but most important is not the things I can point to and say I made this. Most beautiful and surprising and liberating is the doing of the creating. Connecting my mind, body, emotions, to try to express what I can’t express in words. What I can’t express without a visceral fullness of letting my soul emerge as it wants to. There’s surrender in it. More so than I ever let myself experience in my previous art. I never made what I wanted to make before. I never knew what I needed to get out of me, until now.
Hopefully I’ll share it someday. It all still needs to be explored more deeply, more patiently. Maybe. Or maybe I’ll create a few pieces or many pieces in a fast manner and release them in the blink of an eye. But the thing is, my creations and I have to decide, privately, together, in communion, in agreement with each other. I worry about what might be coming through. I feel afraid of it. I feel more than I ever thought I could feel. You know? I mean. For someone just alone in a room with unmade and half-made, and crudely made art. And all the things I don’t know how to say. All the things I never knew how to say. And realize I might be finding a way to say them, in a language that lives inside of me but I didn’t know until I let it come out onto the page. There’s a way of expressing a self I’m meeting for the first time.
People go to art school for this shit I guess. I’m sure there’s rules I don’t understand and all that. But this, for once in my life, isn’t about intellect. Or even beauty. It’s about something so much bigger, broader, more widely expansive and encompassing. It is helping me to feel whole. Or even more than that—to attempt to express from my whole being, at once. In unison. It’s a completely different collection of feelings from writing. There’s a primalness I am so intrigued by. A freedom. Whatever I’m involved with when I get into it, really into it, it’s a dynamic alive thing. This morning I cried while creating with it. I cried hot, cathartic, ecstatic tears. It’s like I was at the mercy of a an endlessly merciful energy.
All this may sound dramatic, right. Yeah. I have actually always had a severe dramatic streak in me. Not drama for the sake of drama. But I feel things so insanely deeply, and it can feel insane to live in a world that isn’t equipped to deal with that, with me. It runs deep. How deep, I’m not sure I can really say. We’ll see. I’ve said more than maybe I should have. But I wanted to show up. I want you to know I’m so grateful, and glad, and happy you are here with me. There’s trust and faith in that. And fuck knows there’s so little left of that in general. Which sucks. But you and I are here. And we matter. And we keep showing up.
🥰😍😀🤩😘😌💖💘❤️🩷🧡💛❤️😂😘
You're so lovely and I'm happy to be here 💛