Dear reader—
The past few weeks have been a stressful mass of a whirlwind. I have to move and leave the first place I’ve felt at home for a long time, maybe ever… I am grateful for the time I had here. My future feels deeply unknown.
I am trying to stay grounded through these changes by strengthening my spiritual practice, in my tarot ritual the hanged man appears again and again. He appeared to me a lot earlier this summer as a premonition. The feeling of suspension during deep uncertainty while everything feels so out of control.
I dissolve into myself when things are challenging. I become frozen when I feel helpless. I had a lot of instability growing up, having to move constantly in ways that felt traumatizing. I became detached as a result, knowing that any place is fleeting, and that I only have myself in the end.
It makes sense that my circumstances have shaped me into nihilism and apathy, moving into meaning and connection feels like running away while on a leash. Sometimes it’s tight and suffocating, sometimes it loosens enough and I find myself in an open field, and I feel free.
That space is all I live for. And I am trying my best to create it even when I feel deeply backed into a corner, in a disempowering karmic loop of trauma, self hatred, fear, and uncertainty.
And I thought, well, I feel like I have nothing to lose to I might as well share something I made.
I am thinking a lot these days and one thing I think about is how stale it feels to be a musician these days. The cycle of making a record, promoting, performing… it’s ancient. I keep wondering how to break those barriers, how to make more space for myself. I don’t know yet. I enjoy this way of sharing though, where it feels like a part of my organic cycle. I don’t feel like what I am trying to say fits into anything that already exists. I feel like I have to create it for myself, but it’s hard when there’s no model for it. And the preexisting model is clearly so broken.
So much of what exists now feels like it’s at a breaking point. Something has to give. I find comfort in how inevitable that feels.
-A