#theoctopusproject

posted by itsnothewayoukiss on instagram

i saw the octopus project live in concert earlier this year. to many people living in austin that doesn’t mean much, as the band has been around a long time and never really got the love it deserved. however, within the last four years they have come to mean a lot to me and now represent this strange time i’ve found myself in. there is a magical type of hell in between adolescence and adulthood, where your childhood memories are no longer the largest context within who you are. actions become the loudest form of expression and are the way in which we perceive each other. if you hold that girl very close to your heart, you have to choose every day to betray her and grow into an adult. there may be a way to do both, to protect her and yet flourish into accountability, i am still trying to figure that out. for a long time i thought being the best version of me meant honoring the past, using the things i have been through to color my world and my relationships. i realize in doing this i am choose to remain stagnant, to prioritize where i have been instead of welcoming the uncertainty of where i could go. change is something worse than scary, though learning maturity can make life feel real.

savoring the beauty in music is better when you’ve lived enough to know what it feels like. nostalgia becomes more indulgent the further away i get from sparkling adolescence, drug-like and dizzying in its’ simplicity.

this article by the chronicle is written about the artist who does the animation for an octopus project music video that is an ultimate comfort to me. W.A Brenner, the journalist, has notes about Srinivasan’s appearance, stating “[she] is smiling uncertainly, her pretty face framed on both sides by shoulder-length hair like trickling liquid licorice.” Srinivasan’s art is childish and colorful in a lovely way, and is punctuated beautifully by the song in the music video. I wondered how she felt after reading the article and if she noticed there was more said about how she looks rather than the qualities of her creations. To me this is another example of betraying the girl inside you for adulthood, and particularly success. Must there be a beautiful girl behind every talented woman? She mentions in the article having made some ugly paintings when she was young and bold, or maybe cared less about what others thought, and I wait for the day in which I too stop myself from putting my own paintings on the wall. Can you find a new space for that girl inside you? Can she live in the things that you create?