Brynna Campbell

This is a song about masculinity. I promise it's nice! Hope you're having a decent day.

And I get it. Women have suffered a whole lot at the hands of men. I am also a woman! And I'm in the music industry - I've experienced harassment, assault, casual misogyny - everything under the sun. I quit songwriting for 14 years because of men who dehumanized me at every second of the day. I carry that anger with me EVERYWHERE. Maybe my song "Siren" is more your speed. It's about men not being entitled to your time or body.

But there are also a whole lot of men in my life who are trying to do better. And we're incapacitating them by perpetuating the same toxic masculinity they get from all sides. We tell them their problems don't matter, which forces them to internalize their emotions. It only continues the cycle.

I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.

@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.

Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches

And THEN.

I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.

HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.

I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."

Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.

I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.

It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research

There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA

Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."

The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.

It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.

I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.

Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.

The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.

I was wondering if you have any advice for anxious buckaroos that are a little scared of putting themselves out into the world?

Maybe some advice you would tell your younger self?

Thank you for all you do <3

yes bud. part of my way on autism spectrum is that when i used to create EVERYTHING HAD TO BE PERFECT i would get so riled up by every small imperfection and if one little dang problem popped up then everything was ruined and chuck was in a BAD WAY.

there is no 'cure' for autism and i do not want my way to be cured, i LOVE being autistic, but this particular part of my trot was not healthy for me and i learned to adapt. part of my adapting trot was to start letting things be perfectly imperfect. it was small steps at first but now i can swim in a beautiful ocean of chaos pretty dang well.

anxiety and autism are not the same thing of course but maybe you can relate to this philosophical lesson of chuck:

when you create, whether that is with VISUAL ART or FOOD or A WALKING PATH THROUGH THE PARK or a BREATH OF AIR you have already made the perfect version of this thing, because it is a reflection of that moment on this timeline. you have CAPTURED THE NOW

any anxious feelings of 'am i doing this wrong?' 'is this weird?' 'is this incorrect?' 'is this awkward?' can always be answered with 'well this is perfect representation of right NOW'. if you are trotting with love in your way and fueling your path then THAT will shine through at the end and you will move towards something great, and the STEPS to get there are ALL perfectly imperfect.

to move it back to art, lets say you are trying to paint a field but you get out there with your canvas and you forget your dang GREEN PAINT. you might think 'DANG what a disaster i cannot paint the green grass gotta use red now this is the worst painting ever'. but here is the thing, that painting is not broken it is a PERFECT REFLECTION of what led to it and it is a PERFECT REPRESENTATION OF NOW because now is not perfect. what that painting says is 'this is the field of someone who forgot their green paint at home' and there is nothing WRONG with that. in fact that is exactly the kind of thing that makes trotting through this timeline fruitful and wonderful.