Self expression: The artists way
🎧Listen here🎧 for the artists experience
What ya thanking babe, what ya feelin, tell me what you know? I think we’ve been stuck in a funk. “It’s the moon,” I say jokingly ((not really)). I sat there in silence, earphones in, 100 yard stare, at a place I’m supposed to be forgetting about work, doing my work when suddenly the spirit of Michael Jackson himself possessed me. “What are we doing?”
Too tired to do anything midweek, but as I sat there finishing work after work hours I thought, what the fuck am I doing? I just sat and let my thoughts roam. Like most people, there’s this constant question of identity, who we are at our core. They say ignorance is bliss but what’s the opposite of that phrase? when you think so much you get lost in a billion streams of consciousness, mere philosophies of the human experience. Sometimes it feels like I’m on the outside looking in. We spend so much of our lives focused on the tasks at hand that we forget to include the fun that breathes life into us. What makes you smile? What triggers a fire to create?
Self expression: the artist’s way. Sit. Be alone. Get comfortable with yourself. Ask: how can I show a piece of me through this?
It’s funny, my friend sent me a message: “hey can you help me and Z-ify this… just work your magic.” Asking me to stamp my signature on it. I wasn’t even aware I had one. I thought about the parts of myself I don’t share but want to. How can I tell you _____________ without explicitly telling you?
In modern day we have preconceived notions of what we should be depending on the space. Your job might have a boring dress code but how can you still show pieces of yourself with what you have? Management used to force me to wear this annoyingly bright shirt with black pants and all I could think was how blah. If communication is my specialty, how would I be able to communicate something about myself with what I had to put up with?
My biggest fear is being misunderstood and being understood. If you can control the aesthetic, you can control the idea underneath a threatening and yet powerful thought. Both feel vulnerable, but as a kid it wasn’t.
Self expression isn’t the art, imprinting yourself onto anything is.
For a moment, driving, I stepped back into little me. No care of what was required from me. Lay on the grass, stare at the sky, fall asleep in the garden. These days, there’s no time to think. I have to schedule time just to let my thoughts roam. Everything looks the same. Everything feels the same. The system is flattening people. Drivers of the algorithm might be to blame but are we too? How complicit are we in that?
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You used to paint. When did that go away? You used to take pictures, where did your camera go? So many things we lose when we abandon parts of ourselves for our “big kid jobs.” And it makes you miserable.
Everyone sticks to the same format if it ain’t broke don’t fix it but it’s breaking us.
How can we begin to get excited about the thing that used to make us feel? In an age where everyone’s chasing the next thing, what if we shifted the narrative to telling the story of who we are with the tools available to us? Never before have we been in a position to create so easily. Self expression as identity control in a world trying to standardize you.
You don’t lack creativity, you’ve just stopped making space for it.
Life is so much better when you choose to see everything as an accessory or extension of self expression.
Free yourself. Be real.
signed with a big smile,
Z
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we’ll keep it a secret,