Friday, March 14, 2008

we build our temples for tomorrow

I. Ownership
It’s becoming glaringly obvious to me that I have a problem with owning my creative output. I believe(d) that art does not need to be accessed through its creator/producer. My name does not need to be on my writing or design work. When I’m challenged on this, as I have been recently and constantly, I find this resistance to claiming my own work. I’m not ashamed of my work, I know it’s good and I know I have unlimited potential to improve. I think this pushing-against stems from the name that I carry. It immediately places me as belonging to a particular ethnic group, religion, and place. My name limits my art. It gives my audience permission to categorise and constrain me. It permits them to use my words as weapons against me. It gives them this presumption of knowing me, and thus knowing what I’m trying to convey. And they’re usually wrong. To give myself permission to breathe, to say what I have to say without fear or being misconstrued, misinterpreted, or even worse, used as a symbol, I remove my name. I don’t deny what I’ve written, but I remove my name. It’s a conscious decision, confounded with regret, anger, frustration, and self-righteousness. But I’m starting to change on that front, because I’m becoming aware that I need to remove that power from my audience. I need to use the power of my words for me. I don’t need to apologise. And I don’t need to protect myself from misinterpretation.

II. “Click.”
Once again, on the self-awareness tip. I’m a person of extremes. I don’t cut corners on anything I do – eating/not eating, socializing/hermiting, writing/not writing. My life’s like a game of Pong, and I’m the ball, external circumstance are the paddles, and sometimes I get so slammed around, I’m not even there. It manifests in my emotions – depressive phases that are so dark and hopeless, ecstatic phases when I’m frighteningly delirious. I’m a human pendulum, swinging through the mid-point like it’s irrelevant. And I just figured, hey, this is just me. This crazy-ass up-and-down is just the way things are supposed to be, and I’m just going to go along with the flow. But last week, I clicked. Audibly and deliberately. And unconsciously. I just felt balanced and in tune. The feeling was so new and so wonder-full. And soul and so amazing.

III. Annotations
The word “annotations” has been recurring in conversations, texts, and concepts. I’ve been annotating previous writings as well, I’ve been calling it “editing”, but the action was definitely annotating. I like the concept of annotating. I like the idea of going through things and adding little notes and comments, improvements and ideas. I’ve been annotating myself, highlighting areas of improvement, little text tabs that say “I LOVE THIS!!!”, and fixing up grammar. I want to annotate other people – I want to take little stickie notes and say “I LOVE THIS ABOUT YOU!!!” and stick them on them. I want to say “Maybe you could include this here?” I want to draw lines through ignorant beliefs and mistakes made (including my own), so during the next round of encounters they’re no longer there. I want the people I love and trust to annotate me, help me improve. And I want everyone to have DRAFT wordmarked onto them, so we all get that we’re past versions of our future selves.

IV. Energy
So, based on two particular conversations I’ve had – one happened last Sunday, the other one last night – I’ve discovered that I’m not weird. This is good news. Things I believe, things I do, are perfectly normal to some people. Two very significant conversations, where I didn’t have to explain myself once. Where I didn’t have to stop and search through my ESL vocabulary for the perfect words. You (M. and T.) really understood what I was saying. This is a huge relief. Thank you.

Peace.