These Teeth Aren't Just For Show

𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖆 𝖜𝖆𝖑𝖑?

as part of an assignment for my HUMANITIES 100 class, i was tasked with stepping out of the confines of my comforting hidey-hole, and out into the world to experience the humanities itself. part of that was to provide visual evidence that i went somewhere and where i went was to the smithsonian hirshhorn museum & sculpture garden:

i have a weird relationship with the hirshhorn.

my ex-girlfriend used to work there as a tour guide, and i was up there several times a week during the summer before we fell apart to visit her. i often went on her tours, though i don’t remember most of them now (i have the memory of a goldfish, and the hirshhorn has constantly rotating exhibits so that doesn’t really help either)—and i’ve personally never been a huge fan of “modern art.” i’ve always been fonder of the european renaissance and baroque classics, as much as it pains me to admit, but very on brand for the types of things i enjoy writing about.

however, i also have a weird relationship with visual art in general by virtue of how we (society) view visual art in comparison to other kinds of art adjacent things, specifically written art. in that: written art carries the expectation of structure while visual art is allowed more fluidity, more dissonance, and simply put—to be weird.

𝖒𝖔𝖗𝖊 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖜𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗

despite my general misgivings of modern art, when i entered the installation room for laurie anderson’s four talks, i was stunned into a dreamlike contemplation. i was less enthralled by the sculptures—though they are very good and in conjunction with the rest of the room do convey a powerful message about the relationship between humanity, capitalism, and how technology entangles between them—but i personally was more enthralled by the room itself. the stream of consciousness thoughts, quotes, lyrics, and musings painted in messy, stark white across the icy black walls and floor. walking through the room felt like perusing a physical manifestation of my own mind; the cacophony of sound that ricochets through it, the ruminations that plague it, and yet when i try to ascribe it to written word, to make sense of it through the sounds and voice that we call a language; or to try and convey it to others—it always seems to fall short, or on deaf ears.

yet here, that stream of thought is recognized as art.

it allowed something to finally connect in my mind. my knee jerk dislike of modern art stems from it being allowed to be things that i feel written art is not allowed to be.

but is it really that written art isn’t allowed to be weird, or that i feel like i can’t be?

𝖜𝖍𝖔 𝖔𝖜𝖓𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖒𝖔𝖔𝖓?

modern art in any and all of its forms, from surrealism, to dadaism, expressionism, and so on, all exist out of necessity to break the rigid molds and shackles of what art is and should be, imposed by the elite to stifle human creativity. there is always pioneers of it, even that exist today. it’s also not entirely accurate to say that writing “isn’t allowed” to break the bonds of publicly imposed confinements: genre conventions only exist because we put those guard rails there, then new genres are formed when someone goes out of their way to displace them.

to better illustrate what i’m trying to say, i should mention that something i’ve never been fond of is labels. from my identity to my books, i have never wanted anything that i engage in to be trapped in a box that it cannot escape from, or have people judge it based on what it says on the tin and not for the contents inside of it.

yes it’s also the autism, everything is the autism, but aside from that:

to cringe is to be free, they say, but my hesitation to be myself isn’t borne out of a fear of being cringe in itself—its borne out of indecision. what form of myself do i want to be? are any of those forms congruent with one another? what kind of audience do i want to appeal to? who is going to read what i write? what if i post something and no one reads it at all? am i trying too hard? it circulates my thoughts like an incessant gnat, yet all it accomplishes is the knee-jerk desire i feel to shove myself into tinier and tinier boxes until i hardly resemble anything that i am at all, instead resembling a cheap imitation of what i think other people want to see from me. it’s not just with writing—though it is the most egregious one as it means the most to me—but whenever i think “oh i’ll start documenting my journaling because i like journaling videos” but then i hesitate because i realize i don’t journal like everyone else on instagram, tiktok, tumblr, and wherever else—then i spend so much time agonizing about it that i give up and never film anything at all. when i think about what i want to be in the nebulous time that i “grow up” i can never pin anything down without feeling like i’m denying some aspect of myself. they can’t all exist in tandem, it feels like.

i had a substack before this one, that was a sort of all-in-one endeavor. i nuked it into oblivion when i got secondhand embarrassment about posting a piece i really enjoy that i wrote several years ago to the hearty sound of crickets. it’s not that worthless war isn’t good, it’s that it had no reach or promotion and i was speaking to a crowd of no one. hoping that someone would stumble upon it by chance is the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack, especially if that haystack is being actively shifted into a hay bale. it did receive some acclaim when i originally posted it on tumblr in the form a few notes, however, i also completely reset my blog at least a month or two ago when the overwhelming urge to erase my entire existence from the internet became too strong. whatever kind commentary and momentary awe scrubbed from existence because i was convinced that my work didn’t meet some imaginary metric that indicated that it was valuable.

i often flop back and forth between the ideas of: am i writing for myself, or am i writing for someone else? and even though it would make the most sense to say that i fall somewhere in the middle—that doesn’t entirely seem to be true to me. at times the pendulum swings one way and i am solely writing things that are completely self satisfying. i am working on betwixt thumb & forefinger, paramour, the chronicles of lathsbury, the many lovers of the king of concordia (names of some of my most indulgent projects), then it swings again and i am fretting because i never finished jenna the reaper, cardia, or purple haze (older projects that have been indefinitely shelved). i write poems like i am (i took your daughter and killed her) or a white man’s god when i want to be scathing, raw, and honest; then in the same breath i am piecing together something of an apology in plea. it feels contradictory because it is: there are two sides warring within me. what do i owe myself, and what do i owe the world around me?

who owns the moon? is it the same as the person who’s emboldened by its glow?

𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖆 𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖟𝖊 𝖔𝖋 𝖌𝖑𝖔𝖗𝖞?

lately, i have been struggling with the idea of existence. i am in utter financial free fall due to a circus’s worth of circumstances and it’s all i can seem to talk about or focus on. everything feels uncertain, tomorrow doesn’t feel promised, it feels like whenever i stare out into the abyss it beckons me closer. i look online and i see the news, i read the headlines. i feel the heat as i walk outside into 100 degree weather and full humidity.

its not a mistake to say the world is burning. physically, yes. but figuratively as well.

the conversation that frodo and gandalf had deep within the mines of moria about wishing that we all did not have to see such dark times has played in a constant loop in my brain for what feels like eternity. but this article is not a broader think piece that is set to give you action items about how to resist fascism or a deep dive into understanding politics—i’d rather leave that to better educated professionals. what i do want to talk about is from a creative standpoint: how do you make sure that the only blaze you feel is your own glory?

it comes back around to cringe. yes, genuinely—and that operative word genuine is what lies at the heart of it all. we have all become so adept at ensuring that our creativity is bound by the boxes of labels; the perfect SEO headlines that reach the widest audiences, and the perfect hook and pitch to gain an army of devoted followers. but i truly cannot imagine that any creative who is widely successful right now is truly successful because they are creating something that is true to their own hearts, minds, and spirits explicitly.

it may seem harsh, but i think so much of artistry nowadays is concerned about appealing to as many people as possible. to make money, yes (you can’t make art if you’re broke and starving, no matter what the mythos may say), to create a legacy sure. but what is a legacy if everyone around you creates the same? do we truly think that the works centered around buzzwords, the art that is shallow and unchallenging, the music that stumbles, mumbles, and relies on strange racism metaphors when literally no one asked, is going to be genuinely worth remembering 100, 200, or even a thousand years from now? even now in our own time, trends come and go so quickly that you blink and you miss them. a book series becomes popular today and is asily replaced by another one just like it tomorrow; an artist doesn’t post an entire album every ten minutes, the world has already moved on. we are intaking faster than we can create, and so to keep up creation has become sloppy, shallow, and tired.

globalization is somewhat of an inevitable thing—in the sense that there is only so much earth and it’s only really a matter of time before we all start crashing into one another. there’s only a few places left where you can truly escape the grips of modern society: even if you were to take a retreat to the corners of the wilderness and the realm of “off grid;” your camping tools, gps, food, and shelter, are all created by the process of entwining cultures, intellect, and ideas over centuries of human history. cultural preservation notwithstanding, the enmeshment and birth of new ideas from the coalitions and alliances of different people is something that is a genuinely interesting part about being human. no other creature separates itself in the same way that we do, and that’s what i find the most interesting about humans as a whole. yet: that globalization comes with a curse of mediocrity. to not get further into the weeds but a simple example is the establishment of “whiteness” in america—the tradeoff of power comes at the price of uniqueness. and that price is something that i wrestle with on a constant basis. is success worth who i am? is it worth it to burn brightly and die out too soon, or to be a slow burn whose flames ignite a generation?

𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖊𝖒𝖕𝖎𝖗𝖊 𝖎𝖘 𝖕𝖆𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌

i don’t find legacy to be a good motivator for doing anything at all in life: you will never be around to drink the juice of the fruit you have cultivated and pruned. creatively at least, that feels like a sort of “death by a thousand cuts.” every hour, day, month, and year that i spend not publishing a book feels like another step closer to a grave full of regret and resentment. what will it matter to me, when i am dead and gone? i fear death because i fear the ideas within me are never ending and worse, i know i won’t have time to finish all of them. its a bit facetious to presume that my work will be remembered that long that generations of people after me will regard it as something intrinsically valuable, but if i do not find my work valuable right now then it will never get cultivated into anything that anyone can or should witness.

the longer i spend fretting about whether or not my work is for myself or for other people, the longer i will spend not writing the things that matter to me. doing the things that matter to me. and thus, i conclude that the solution to this is becoming unapologetic. i have to make being cringe my roman empire, i have to build up the muscle that rejects algorithmic success. i have to take the lessons of modern art and do away with all conventional structure that shareholders and corporations and websites provide, and create something that is wholly, uniquely, freely my own. because until i am laying on my deathbed, i do not want to stare into the abyss any longer with my head bent in indecision and shame; i want to hold my head high and know that if nothing else that i am creating things that set my soul on fire. that i am hanging the moon along with the stars and basking in my own brilliance. that i am overcoming the hurdle of that wall. that i am building my own internal empire that will not crumble when the external one does.