SURRENDER AND THE ILLS OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT / December 29th 2024
This year was the most transformative of my life. Looking back on who I was at the start of 2024 is almost funny. There was so much noise in my head. I don’t think I realized how frantic a companion I was for myself. I thought I had stopped measuring and counting and calculating because I no longer had an eating disorder, but I was still assailed with a need for control so total over every aspect of my life. My iron grip dragged on the ground, making an awful sound and pulling at my shoulder.
I made lists. “Things I’m already doing,” “things I will do this month,” “things I’m avoiding,” thinking they would turn me into someone I’m not. My journal was a place where I pep-talked myself into constant improvement, a place of dissection and analysis.
If I left no stone unturned, then surely I would be well on my way to becoming perfect.
This is an illness of our time. Notions of self-improvement are found at every turn, in water cooler conversations and in every corner of the internet. Whether you’re a cold-plunging Huberman-loving finance bro, a corporate slick bun clean-girl or or an astrology and tarot internet witch, the underlying message is, more often than not, this: you must make yourself better.
This messaging seems, on its surface, benevolent and altogether quite harmless. Becoming a better person is a respectable goal, and is sometimes necessary, but it is a philosophy so watchful, so interested in the future and its acquisitions. At its worst it is consumerist and shallow, but even at its best, it had a sneaky way of robbing me of the present moment.
I bet I’m not the only one who eventually found herself totally submerged. This way of living was drowning out my best ideas, my sense of wonder and my natural curiosity. I had no idea this was happening, or that I had even adhered to the dogma of self-improvement at all. I thought I was just working hard. I thought I was “doing what it takes.”
I thought any undesirable outcome was a reflection of the failures of my character. If I could just be even more disciplined and even more well-rested, if I posted more, if I shook more hands, I would have the music career of my dreams.
I do find that a bit silly now, thankfully. I’ve gone on at length about my change of heart career-wise on this blog, but I think the real lesson of this year for me was surrender. My little sandbox under the sun is all I have control over. The rest will shape me just as much: the wind and its shifting directions, the hands that hold mine, the terrain under my feet.
MY 3 AUTHORITIES / December 2nd 2024
Last Saturday, Bestie and I were rolling at a SAT event (it was fun) when we predictably ended up glued to a couch, in a corner, talking about everything we know in a most revelatory, insightful way. Something I shared particularly resonated with her, and I now feel compelled to post it here, for my few and special readers.
I recently asked myself the following prompt from sighswoon, forever a treasure trove of new thoughts: Who/what is my chosen Authority? I came up with Love, Accuracy and Duty.
1- Love
Being open chested (Mari said this phrase to me in Kelowna last spring). Every interaction with another person is an opportunity to be present.
Accepting people’s love for what it is, trusting it. When I hear “I love you” pronounced in every way it can be, I must believe it to be true. I take it and I run with it.
Being generous of interpretation (I think I heard this from Glennon Doyle). I believe this is the ultimate effort of love. Recognizing the innocence in the people around me.
Attempting to see people for who they are, as opposed to an extension of myself. I cannot attach my will to theirs, nor my fears nor my hopes. I must be curious about others even if – especially if – I’ve known them forever.
2 - Accuracy
Truth seeking (more on “Truth” right below), endless curiosity.
Attempting to be precise with my words and with my actions.
A perhaps naïve belief that I hold close to my heart, which is that truths exist outside of culture, and that those pure meanings can be infused into culture with directed action. This reminds me of the idea of meta-truths, i.e. statements that are wholly false, but that may serve you well if you act as if they were true (a good example of this is, “in the presence of a gun, always behave as if it were loaded.”)
SIDENOTE ON TRUTH THAT I CANNOT OMIT:
I’ve been thinking about the question: “is there a way things actually are?”
Purity of meaning.
If I’m expressing an opinion or an idea to another person, is there a way for me to purely, exactly convey my meaning, and how will I know I have done so?
I’m quite charmed by the idea that Truth exists. We have reached a point in human history where we operate mostly in a post-truth milieu, so my willingness to believe in Truth is perhaps a manifestation of my undying optimism. It feels counter-cultural, which is to say that it feels good to believe in.
I find this notion difficult to convey, and I intend on continuing to try my best at that. This is what I have for now.
What I mean by “Truth” is physical truth or meaning that exists outside human culture, that sits beneath it, precedes it and always outlives it. It includes both the physical world and the world of ideas, those deemed “good” and those deemed “bad”. The main problems with this ideal are the limitations of language and the specificity of our interface with what is. When we use words to convey meaning, a lot of “sense” or “essence” will inevitably fall through the cracks of any given language. Words are discrete in a way that may not align perfectly with the shape of meaning, which is also discrete. Our senses, tools and cognitive biases will inevitably fail us, in the end. Is there some other way we can access something, anything?
3 - Duty
Being in service of others or something greater than me.
“Obligation is freeing” which I’ve talked about here. In a word, when something is obligatory, I am freed from the energy-consuming task of constantly choosing. It is a wonderful mental and metabolic shortcut to make the final boss decision of making something obligatory.
Accountability.
Healthy self-doubt, humility.
Committing to being a dutiful champion of love in a world of lovelessness (this originally came to me last year after reading “all about love” by bell hooks).
I have no way of tying this one up nicely, but these are three principles I wish to live by and often struggle to do so. I wish you a beautiful Monday!
ON CHOICE / September 13th 2024
Last night, upon going to bed, I was hit with a submarine feeling of grief.
After spending the day doing exactly what makes me happy, and telling myself, “I can’t believe this is my life,” I welcomed the precious nature of this phase of my life – or of any phase of life, for that matter – its similarity to what a second is to an hour, or to a day. People I miss started to appear behind my eyelids, along with previous dreams I once held close to my heart that may never come to be realized, visions I had for my life that I have since let go of. Things I still want, things I still think I want. And it was clear to me at that moment that I may not have it all. My life would be a concentration of the beautiful things I give my time and energy to, and the unattended beauty would slip away over the years, perhaps making room for things I don’t know I want yet.
Essentially, trade offs.
I thought, “I’m gonna have to choose.” I can’t do it all. I can’t be with everyone. I can’t be everywhere.
In some ways this is a rudimentary realization that one might have in their teenage years. I think I’m having it now because the scope of my desire and of my love has really been blown open in the last couple of years. There is so much I want for myself: to make music with my friends and play shows, to write and read lots, to cook for my family and live by a lake, to continue my yoga practice, to have a law practice where I participate in making tech safer for its users and in protecting artists’ rights, to maintain my invaluable friendships in Montreal and help raise everyone’s kids, to exist in community, to keep climbing with my brother and G, to keep falling in love over and over…
I’m gonna have to choose.
There is also a voice that tells me, “you kind of have all of this already.” Even the “future” plans are happening now (read: “SOLSTICE, MUSINGS ON ‘FOREVER”). Maybe the room I make within myself for all these desires is a direct reflection of the room I will always make for it on the outside, in the material world.
But spirit is so powerful, I can’t help but fear that it encompasses more than one life can bear. Fortunately, I am not yet at a point where I can know what one life is capable of carrying.
LIONSGATE PORTAL / August 8th 2024
Of course I would be catsitting during a particularly powerful lionsgate year (2+0+2+4=8). I think the cat, Rio, is totally feeling it. He is manic today. I personally started feeling quite anxious, seemingly out of nowhere, yesterday in the late morning. Then I remembered the date.
Starting today’s lionsgate musings with a list of gratitudes:
Catching vibes
Birds
Fun beverages (hot AND cold)
Group chats
My body
Water (LAKES)
Yoga
Roads
Our ancestors
Anime
I’ve been told it is easy to get carried away during the week of lionsgate, not unlike a full moon’s energy bringing you to force things, push too hard, pull too close.
Perhaps this mystical moment of alignment is better spent in contemplation, in meditation and in visualization rather than in action. Action comes later, once the hotness of the lion has cooled and our musings gel into a substance we can manipulate safely.
Lionsgate is not physical, it is energetic. We must not mistake the symbolic strength and prowess of the lion as a call to utilize force in the realization of our desires (more on this later). It is a time of sanctity, where the veil is thinner, therefore requiring great care and attention on our part.
I feel the need to make a point about manifestation. I think the notion of it has gotten highly misconstrued as the realization of desire. If we were to explain the concept of eating to an alien (who, presumably, would be non-physical lol), we wouldn’t say “humans put things in their mouths to taste them. We need to taste things on a daily basis or else we die.” The desire component of manifestation is hardly scratching the surface of it. Desires fulfilled, though a vital part of life, is fickle stuff. It does not respond to our deepest need for meaning and guidance. Manifestation starts with a practice of quieting the mind and creating an empty space, detaching from ego and asking:
“What is needed in the collective?”
“How must I show up? What are my tools to do so?”
Essentially: “What does God want for me?”
(Pardon the borrowing of this religious term. I entirely mean “the universe,” the love that permeates all beings, the perfect design and orchestration of nature. I do not mean the dogmatic man that humans invented to induce fear and docility.)
The answers that come up will feel so yummy because they will come from the purest of sources. And perhaps, when the ego wakes back up, the answers will happen to align with its desires, if we are lucky.
A word on “answers”. Sigh swoon called them “a place of rest.” When she said that I thought of a staircase landing in the sky. So fun.
Ending with the substance I am meditating on today and calling in for the year to come:
Yummy focus, flow
Delving into the task at hand
Being present with hardship, finding gratitude within it
Moments of concentration as a portal to bliss
Love, devotion
Inspired by my innate, eternal fangirl energy
Trust that love prevails and trumps all else: culture, ego, fear
Reminding myself that love is also grace for all beings
Happy Lionsgate to all who practice! xx
“1” / July 4th 2024
When I watch you
dip a finger to taste the sauce
that is me I see
When we gather our sandy feet
puddle our hopes into some center
clutch hands and chant
I recognize us
Something like a joke
in a grocery aisle, for three to hear
maybe four
Or looking for the neighbor’s cat at dusk
When I watch him go in
slouched over his unkempt friend
I know how much he needs her
And when the cries of a child
wake me, I am plunged back
into the park, green with love
SOLSTICE, MUSINGS ON “FOREVER” / June 20th 2024
The earliest solstice in like 100 years is today; marking a time for nourishment, harvesting what we planted in spring, collecting our bounty and turning inward. A time of assessment, of receiving.
I am called to wonder which parts of me need feeding and realize that I feel pretty full, which is an utterly priceless blessing. Two things I am calling in for the season of Cancer: laughter and meeting new people.
Also, lately, the realization that “this is forever.” When I revisit the past from the safety of my present mind, I conjure up into existence everything that was back then. I make it real again. I can savor it slowly like frozen chocolate as if I was still there, albeit not with the same innocence as before, but with the knowledge that it is precious. I think we have the power to shift our perception from “I wish I was back there” to “when I go back there in my mind, I am overcome with the presence of that past moment.”
We can make of time what we wish. The summer solstice can be just another day or it can be a delicious occasion to take stock and feed on what you’ve grown, your efforts rewarded. The past can be a mad dog biting at your heels, bringing only fear, or it can be a dewy meadow you take comfort in while you wait in line at the grocery store. It need not be a reminder that the best is behind you, or that you’ve lost – it can be a reminder that life brings forth many blessings, their benefits lasting, dare I say, forever.
This notion may sound contrived to some, but I really resonate with it. Past love lost is a promise of more love. Dude!!!!! I feel this so deeply. More importantly, playing with notions of time-bending has proven to be quite healing for me. That is the nugget of what I’m trying to get at: your past selves and your present self and your future selves are all in constant conversation. What you think now informs what you will think next and sheds new light on what you once thought.
I’m gonna stop here before I get too painfully metaphysical. Happy solstice!
MY MINISCULE SAND PIT IN THE SUN / June 9th 2024
On June 6th I got my acceptance letter to law school.
It’s okay that I’ve changed, and that I’ve changed my mind. I’m choosing not to play to the industry’s whims (maybe I never have). Constant production, unsustainable big tech feudalism and artist exploitation. I’m re-committing to making art for art’s sake. Maybe that is completely silly, but I’m not concerned with that.
Art for art’s sake. I must not forget this. It means I get to do whatever the fuck I want.
In the wake of burying an old version of myself (lol), I deeply know that nothing is forever. I see this now. Not even parts of one’s identity. If anything, identity is one of life’s most fleeting transpirations. It emerges from such mutable, fickle, arbitrary sources: the grown-ups that surround us and trends and overheard sentences that sound vaguely cool, and our indulgent interpretation of it all. Wildly specific time and place. The result of wars and domination and ego. Inheritance, for better or worse. How so dearly attached we are to it – justifiably so. The ways in which we assign meaning to identity is adorable and human and surely necessary to survival. Perhaps another kind of survival takes place when we detach from it too, sit underneath it. Some ocean floor, silent.
It is easier to talk about what is mutable in this life. Poetry can take care of the rest.
I feel so humbled by the experience of changing my mind. How dare I believe that I could ever know what comes next? What I am in charge of is so infinitesimally small in comparison with the rest, the chaos that shapes everything. Which is not to say that it does not matter, my miniscule sand pit in the sun, for it is, like all things, under said sun. But proportionality matters, I guess.
The current discomfort I’m experiencing, the “being in-between”, will keep being challenging. It might even continue once I start school. But this is a forging fire; it is transformative. This is where the good stuff happens. There will be sleepless nights and fear. And also relief, excitement, fulfillment and disappointment. Moving through it all as slowly as I can.
"PAUL'S TOMB" / June 5th 2024
There was a man on the hill
and I too, sat
open chested. He turned to me
and asked,
“have you been here before?”
“Not like this.”
It’s always beautiful the second time around
and the third
right down to the white chicken bones
the crumbs between couch cushions
where someone sticks their toes
under your thigh without asking
a cup in the groove of a saucer
a key in the door.
Welcoming in is agreeing to
wake up with new bruises
and stand by the window
till a bird gets hurt
but oh, what else.
JUST A RECTANGLE / May 11th 2024
Looking out my kitchen window throughout the seasons as I eat my daily meals is a slower, quieter TikTok. Just a rectangle framing something to watch.
I’ve been keeping myself far from TikTok for several months, and Instagram for a couple of weeks now. I tend to do this out of protectiveness when I feel more vulnerable, as I do these days. This time around, I am particularly harsh with my screen-time limitations, and it’s proving to have profound effects on me.
Some thoughts:
-
What is real and what is not
The power of something that is real is its sensoriality. As we experience the world through our senses, we can confirm that the street we walk on is real, that the sweet grape we chew on is real, that the perfume we pick out as a gift is real. When we leave our homes and go somewhere else (the park, the movie theater, the post office), that place becomes especially real as we enter it. We hear the kids laugh and we see the water fountain gushing and maybe we feel some water droplets hit our skin.
The things my phone shows me are not my experiences. They are not places I enter, they are not a friend’s hug, or an evening walk. They are two-dimensional approximations of what I could experience; what I could be experiencing but am not. Being stuck there for any length of time is tragic and dull.
-
Keeping up with friends
My friends are my superpower. Connecting with them is a precious gift and all I ever want to do, really. It’s been interesting to notice, in my semi-absence from social media, how much of that connecting occurs through it. Knowing who went where, with whom. Knowing what we collectively decide to care about, talk about. Who’s accomplished a milestone, who is moving, who has picked up cycling, who’s looking for a car ride next Sunday.
I just don’t know what the fuck’s going on unless I intentionally reach out.
-
True solitude
I spend a lot of time alone. More than I used to. But in order to be truly with my self, and with no one else, I can’t be inundating my brain with 15 second-clips of other people’s faces, opinions, talents. It’s much easier to make sense of life and my feelings when I’m forced to sit and listen.
Ironically, I saw this reel months ago of a girl saying she “raw-dogs forming thoughts in the morning” by not checking her phone or any media before she leaves the house. I love that.
Anyways. I just recalled leaving the house at 5pm one day after scrolling too much, and as I was walking around a community garden I thought “right, I can just come out here and look at stuff whenever I want.” It seems absurd that anything would ever make that statement less obvious, or anything other than self-evident, but my phone addiction clearly had.
Those who know me know that I won’t shut up about the effects of short-form content and the current design of social media apps on the dopamine system. I have repeatedly told my poor dinner companions that I think it’s one of the most dangerous creations of humankind. Maybe that makes me sound alarmist or uneducated, but I don’t care.
I also know that there is no going back. People say Biden is trying to ban TikTok, but what he’s really trying to do is change the pair of hands that pulls its strings. The Biden administration doesn’t care about the US nation’s dopamine systems, motivation and capacity for effort. It cares about what China does with American data.
TikTok and other models like it, i.e. literal slot machines for children, available day in day out, are here to stay.
Even I can attest to the value spaces like TikTok can create; spaces of great communion, imagination, inspiration and protest. It’s a place to forage for information, collect ideas, and to be entertained.
How can we maintain and protect spaces like these without mortgaging people’s attention spans and health?
I doubt our governments will ever hold big tech accountable for the havoc it has wreaked – in people’s brains and in most (if not all) creative industries. Maybe the fifth industrial revolution will be ethical afterall.
OBLIGATION IS FREEING / May 1st 2024
March + April included some of the most psychedelic moments of my life thus far. Moments of surrender, of shedding. Stripping back can sometimes feel like abandoning oneself, but it is only later that I realize: you can peel back all you want, the layers were never you. You are always underneath the layers, flavorless, empty.
The same way that I cannot outrun myself, I also cannot lag behind.
For the first time in years, I went to a show without being one of its performers, without an agenda. I was not there to network, or for self-advancement. I was there purely for pleasure, accompanying a friend in support of her own friend who was performing. I had no prior knowledge of his work, in fact, it didn’t even cross my mind to look it up beforehand. I was simply curious to see and hear new things, to be with my friend, to meet hers.
I felt so present, connected to the people I met, to the music I heard. It made me realize how embodied I’ve become: not seeking validation (which is always forgiven), not needing reassurance of my relevance. My appreciation – in the intended sense of “to appreciate”, “to take stock of” – of who/what I am, does not rely on my roles in the world. It is separate from that. These feelings of confidence, of quiet (God?), ironically come at a time when I’ve chosen to occupy quite a glorified role in my future: that of practicing law. But that is not how I perceive it, or the mental route I’ve taken to get here. I feel as though it is proportionate to my abilities, my desires.
I am immeasurably grateful to have the resources to pursue a career in law, and perhaps because of those very resources, feel as though it is my duty to do so.
I have been seeking a sense of duty, asking for it. And it appeared just in time, in the form of a letter in my mailbox, out in the cold January air.
Obligation is freeing.
In tandem to this, I have been noticing my relationship to music, its nature. I realize how I’ve instrumentalized it, forgetting the intrinsic love for it that initially made me want to pursue it as a career. Pursuing it as a career became a way of asserting my culture dominance, my physical worth. All coming from a place of lack. A wounded animal lashing out. Still, this dynamic between music and myself remains valuable in the sense that it had its reasons for existing, which I now observe as it morphs into something new.
In letting go of the success narrative I wove so tightly around music, I’m creating space for desire to emerge again. Or that is my hope for the future, rather. I still have a lot of tenderness around releasing music, which I am currently preparing to do. It takes an unnamable effort, an elan that completely depletes me. Knowing I’m about to do that again, for the last time in a long time, is both daunting and an absolute relief.
ON APPLYING TO LAW SCHOOL / March 22nd 2024
Man is the dream of the dolphin. Heard that on “clear pilled” today and thought: yes.
I applied to law school yesterday. In my bag, present, listening. This week I also realized my spiritual experience thus far has been the selfish kind. I have an inkling that practicing law will widen the scope of my life in a humbling, important way (after the grueling studies, that is).
My favorite term these days is “leaning in.” Since all things and feelings and states are fleeting, it is our DUTY to lean in. I’m at a point in my short life where I can even feel exhausted from being so happy, from basking in it so wholly. Every day I find a reason to be devastated and another to feel utterly, disproportionately elated. I don’t know what any of it means.
There is something so poignant about now. Every second is graspable, a hold for my fingers.
ON LIFE BEING ART / March 16th 2024
After spending a weekend with an old friend in a smaller town, I come back home filled with the kind of stillness that escape can sometimes provide. My life is also this: going somewhere, going away. Afterwards, I do not "return" to my life. It is all a dear part of it.
Lately I have been charmed by the objects that furnish my day-to-day. The smallest details, the most mundane sights, jump out at me now. A forest green pack of gum next to a moss-colored plastic hairclip, an ice-blue lipbalm, all resting on a lacquered white surface that I clean weekly, with reverence.This is the type of poetry that used to escape me.
Something has been stirring within me, requiring most of my energy. If I am a planet, my tectonic plates are shifting. It feels like surrender. I defer to the forces at play, I bow deeply.
"I would rather be on the outside looking in."
I do not desire what I used to, no longer seek to dine at a table that feasts on exclusion and exploitation. Currently, making art has become justified only by its monetization, and its monetization has become increasingly dependant on digital clout, nuance-erasure, delibarate dumbing-down... and initial wealth of time and currency (followers and money alike).
I do not wish to compete. Perhaps I am simply not built for it, as much as I succeeded in convincing myself that I was. That is a mistake I am willing to admit to.
What if I decided that I have nothing to prove? What then?