I WROTE SOMETHING THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE, IF YOU LET IT

...or be too cool. Whatever.

We’re told we cannot be, cannot do, cannot have, cannot trust, cannot be loved, and on the list of defeat goes.

The wild part of that to me is that it’s obviously untrue, and yet, we write circles around it.

Artists claiming to speak from truth, yet hiding inside of confrontation, sidestepping accountability, or lashing out like children on the playground when someone says, “Actually, you’re kind of being a dick.”

Accountability is the ability to self-reflect without shaming yourself or the other person. An inability to take accountability is trauma being projected onto someone whose language mimics a pattern that caused you hurt.

I used to take it to heart when someone would say something unkind to me.

My dad told me they could go fuck themselves. Yes, he told me that since I was about 5.

He would say, “What did you say to them?”

I would answer along the lines of, “I told them that what they were doing was mean.”

He would say, “Then they can go fuck themselves.”

My dad didn’t have the education, language, or upbringing that afforded him gentler sensibilities, but he was a kind and gentle man. He was also fiercely protective of me.

Not in the bubble-wrap way. I was absolutely a fucking moron child who should’ve probably died at least 6 times. I jumped down a flight of stairs just to see what would happen and hid my sprained ankle for a week. My friend and I entered a bull pen to save a bird I spotted, and I absolutely got into strangers’ cars (I mean… I was 21, so I guess I was a stupid fucking adult, too).

But my dad made sure I knew to listen to who I was on the inside, always.

I think unconsciously, he was protecting the parts of himself that were no longer allowed to be free inside our household without being mocked. My dad was a strong, masculine presence, told he was weak by my mom and sister.

So now, when I see people who can actually be great, I feel like my dad’s energy is trapped inside my ribcage, dying to be let out.

The only problem is, I am not a man, and therefore that masculine presence inside of me feels confronting to a lot of people: both men and women.

It feels like domination, it feels like mocking, it feels like *insert the wound you pretend to hide, but I see clearly*.

I am so over great people pretending they’re not. Soft-hiding behind “fear of judgement”. You are great, and you know it. And if you’re not, you do too, ya fatmouth.

I just find it funny, and depressing, and delightful to watch the people who could literally change the world hold onto “we cannot, we cannot, we cannot” like it’s a collective chorus of defeat.

Self-deprecation is lame.

You’re not bragging to say “I wrote something”; it’s not even bragging to say “I wrote something you need to read”. It’s not even bragging to write “I WROTE SOMETHING THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE, IF YOU LET IT.”

That’s the truth.

And I won’t live inside a world of ‘cannot’. I watched my dad do it as an artist who succumbed to a job inside a workplace and a household he felt obligated to maintain because he was told, “that’s just life. Now deal.”

No. Life is what you make it. Grab the horns of it and fucking ride.

I’m not saying reality (yours) doesn’t exist. I’m saying, inside that reality, where have you already given up on the things you say you want?

What are you doing that makes your inside knot up in the name of your art?

Speak to that, share that, show me your fucking soul, ya toot. That’s the part we’ve forgotten inside our AI-war-divisive-catastrophy fear mindset.

You have a gift. Share the fuck out of it in a way that doesn’t make you want to fork your eyeballs out after.

Find your way. Spray it.
Find your people. Love them.

Don’t be a dickwad.

<3

— This quick PSA brought to you by my headphones charging, and I refuse to clean my apartment without them.