ceo of glitching

This semester, the overarching theme of care has gone into everything I’ve created. For my final project, I made energy-charged cyanotypes that say “Yes, this is real”. They are made with the intention to be grounding materials, signs one can look to in times of distress. After the unexpected passing of my best friend, this feels even more important. Art can heal. Can art be a sign, and reminder, to stay strong?

just writing to say i love you all. thank you for being. i am so grateful for all of you. this class is my saving grace.

my earth has been shattered in the last week after my best friend took her life. i’m left asking questions with a broken heart. today is the first day i feel even slightly normal and even that just feels wrong. but after teaching my first students ever for the last time, i was overwhelmed with the realization of the importance of what we do. art matters. art can give you a purpose when everything else feels wrong. photographs of good times become memorials and memories of the times you’ve shared with the ones you love. it hurts, but i will never stop taking them. i will never stop sharing them. i want to save someone through art. art is therapy, how can we aid in people receiving it?

life is different now. last full moon we were together and now she is gone, but her memory will live in everything i touch, experience, and see forever.

i cannot dream tonight,

my mind is preoccupied.

i check and i check and i check

i double check and i double check

my list is still the same.

i need to rest, but i think about tomorrow

nothings wrong but everything

my body clock ticks loudly

everything but nothings wrong

inner voice gets rowdy

i’m sorry that i’m always sorry

it’s scary when all it takes

is a smell to start

panicking.

this hurts now but it won’t last forever

i have wings and so do you

i saw them last night

when we crashed through the light

you and me,

my younger self and me now.

we were not scared to soar,

but grateful for the opportunity

to be a light.

to see clearly.

to illuminate the path for others.

i had to push, but it was worth it.

i wonder where my soul was last night,

I have a question for you, special feather:

what was it like to soar through the air, completely alone and free?

did it feel like home in the sky?

did you feel alone

or lonely?

sometimes I feel like the sum of two odd numbers

does that make sense?

anxiously anticipating whats next,

but you,

you just glide on the body you’re on,

carefree and whimsical,

and when you are ready,

you let go.

you fall.

you become something else and you’re ok with that.

you are fluid.

and someone with a keen eye will spot you,

will see value in you, perhaps.

pick you up and take you home, and declare you are something special,

and your existence will remind them of the freedom they have within themselves.

them.

Toning -> tone down: phrasal verb with tone verb. us/toʊn/ to make something less forceful or offensive.

Now as an adult that is out of the closet as gay, I find myself often feeling the need to tone myself down in various ways in order to create a feeling of safety. Whether that be putting on a wig for my classic mother who has a very binary way of thinking, or trying to be as ambiguous as possible on the street to avoid looks, it can be intimidating and depressing to recognize that who you feel you truly are is not commonly appreciated or accepted by society.

She/they has become a safety net: it protects me in times where “they” will not be understood, and softens the blow when I am referred to as “she”. I am morphing for everyone else around me’s comfort, never my own. If it were up to me, I would just be considered a human. A person. THEM. Fluid and ever-changing. It feels like a big secret, one that I don’t yet feel comfortable fully asserting. So it lives in secret places, poems and songs and pieces of art that I make to express how exhausted it feels to perform for the approval of others. It is invisible to a degree, while also being carved into my brain, rent free. No one would ever guess how much time I spend stressing over something as simple as a pronoun.

I often wonder, “what's the worst that could happen?” and then remember my childhood, filled with emotional abuse and conditioning of what I, as the coveted “only daughter” and “only niece” and “only granddaughter”, was expected to do and enjoy and be. It’s hard to go against the conditioning you were told since you were young, which is why it took me so long to come out to begin with. Perhaps my family will never understand my identity.

It’s a shame they will never know me.

a van WHAT did you just call me!!!??!?!?!?!?

delirious dysania and jaunty jokes

how exhausting it is too morph constantly.

mind-numbing internal mayhem 

meets

the illusion of safety 

through performing what you want to see.

what you want to see.

what a collab.

I receive adulation,

but when the curtain closes, I am with me,

 and I stare.

ineffable imagination

I’ve been waiting for this one.....TURN IT UP!

F*** THE BINARY! I am so done with the idea of good and bad. There only Is. We try so hard as humans to put everything into boxes in order to create meaning, but what if it just isn’t that deep? Why can’t we just make things just because it feels good? Why can’t we make mistakes when mistakes are what teach you the most? I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve learned WAY more about myself and my work through “bad” critiques than “good” critiques. We need to release the idea that good=success and bad=failure. While I understand that mode of thinking was what helped people survive up to this point in their own ways, we no longer need or benefit from these ideas. People should be encouraged to make mistakes and be vocal about them and learn from them! Shame culture is mad lame and prohibits growth.

Radical vulnerability coming at ya...Lately I’ve felt so stuck in my practice. Everyday I carve aside time to work on my art and everyday I find myself paralyzed, unable to actually do anything, which starts a whole spiral. I began reflecting yesterday on why I feel so stuck. I realized a few things:

1: My work is highly collaborative. I work with other people to get to my final product, and not having that ability right now straight up has me PERPLEXED! Things I want to make require me to be with others, and finding ways to do that in other ways is straight up DEPRESSING CHIEF! Like I know it’s the reality right now, and I’ve been trying to look at it as an exciting challenge which it is, but at the same time like.......I just don’t want to ! This sucks! I feel like I haven’t been honest with myself enough about that. It goes against my character to lean into the negative side of the situation, but like I need to acknowledge it, it’s not healthy not to.

2: I’m trying to force myself to make photographs because my focus area is photography, but that isn’t what’s calling to me right now. I’m more interested in composing spaces in photographic ways, not exactly making photographs. I have a limiting belief that I can’t do this. Why? Partly because of the structure of academia, and partly because I think I lowkey have a fear that if I do something outside of my focus area and fail, I will be a failure. It scares me the idea that the program accepted me based on the work they’ve seen, and what if I start making entirely different work? But I’m realizing that that’s a self-inflicted fear, and that the whole point of grad school is to try everything.

3: The ever-growing global stress now paired with the election coming up and the seasons changing has me feeling down in general. I don’t have motivation and keep having existential crisis daily. It’s hard to make when it doesn’t feel fun. Trying to find different ways to take and make care during these times is challenging. I miss my friends and my hometown, just being close to others in general. The zoom burnout is real.

first van dyke since undergrad ! i was very intimidated by the process at first because i remembered it being difficult, but was surprised that it’s actually much more simple than i remembered! the only thing that keeps tripping me up is the purpose: why van dyke? given the toxicity of the process, i feel as though i have to have a strong point to using it, and i don’t feel drawn to what it does to my images neither conceptually nor aesthetically.

Feeling the full moon energy hard today! It’s funny how the full and new moons keep falling on days we have this class. This full moon in Aries is a call to reflect on ways we have abandoned ourselves, and an encouraging force to return to home within ourselves. I think a major theme for me in 2020 has been trust, especially of myself. I often doubt and get hung-up on my own ideas and then cause myself to be paralyzed with anxiety. I beat myself up for being a human being! I feel so stressed sometimes that I forget that I GET to be here, doing this. This is an extremely incredible blessing, and while it isn’t always easy, I would much rather be stressing over my art than stressing over getting to work at Trader Giottos at 4 in the morning. These challenges we face now as a collective have the opportunity to teach us more about ourselves and the world, and can exist as our self-perceived worst flaw, but the world perceives it as a strength.