post-eclipse digest
I didn’t want leave that stillness. I wanted it to wash over me, to magnetize me with it.
Hello, dear reader—
Are we still the same? I don’t feel the same, but I am still here. I feel a bit at a loss for words, I wasn’t sure I’d get to write a missive this month… but I have experienced such a profound transformation over the past few weeks that I wanted to at least try to document some of it…
Post-eclipse, post-show, I feel a renewed clarity of what my purpose is, if there is one… I’ve been grappling with my identity and my purpose for many years, and I’ve felt a deep insecurity and discomfort with the (perceived) chasm I experienced—between the deep desire to create things and share them + my impostor syndrome and a relentless and brutal inner critic. Every time I’ve played live or shared a release, I’ve gone into a deep shame spiral, I’ve wanted to disappear and delete everything. I’ve thought, everyone who’s been nice to me about my work actually hates me and if they don’t I will let them all down… It is a paralyzing, soul-crushing cycle.
I felt myself almost dancing and flirting with the cycle after my show… But then the transformation of the eclipse was more relentless than my inner battles. I stood transfixed by the absence of light in the sky, the birds as they hushed, the sounds of people around me gasping and screaming as we all stood and witnessed this—the mathematical odds of seeing such a spectacle alone are mind-bending… And as soon as it happened, the light returned, the birds began to sing again as if it’s dawn, and time began to march at its usual pace. But I didn’t want leave that stillness. I wanted it to wash over me, to magnetize me with it.
I immediately started writing as soon as I got home and I haven’t stopped since. It is new work perhaps, different from the project I started last year, but it all falls under the same umbrella of transformation, I believe. And now that I’ve done some processing and healing—the painful things that happened to me make more sense. I remember when, heartbroken and lonely, I stumbled into the record store and picked up Scott Walker’s Tilt—how a simple moment of small curiosity was a catalyst for me to begin to understand what my voice is, what it is I that am trying to say…
I realized, that for whatever reason, I’m here to examine and process pain and darkness + to create from it. That all of the work that resonates with me does share a common thread, the thread of mystery, of the shadow.
I know it sounds a bit simple, but finding this clarity feels really reaffirming in what I am trying to do and say. I don’t feel that deep insecurity anymore, I don’t feel like what I do is fruitless anymore. I am sure those feelings will return (because they always do!), but I feel like this knowing can ground me when my inner critic returns, when I feel unstable—I can find my home again in the velvet tenderness of shadow.
(source — amazing read, btw)
If you are reading this, I hope you are finding stillness in your transformations. I made a playlist for digesting the eclipse if you’re into that:
-A