my second grade art teacher called me mid
embracing the innate creativity in envisioning a better world
hi <3 i’m going to stop apologizing for delayed updates and promising consistent posting because clearly i’m a LIAR…I love writing this newsletter, i love anyone who reads, shares, and/or gives feedback, but i do not love my bag of frozen peas for brains that makes writing seem like the most insanely difficult task man has ever achieved.
until next time, thanks for reading
this newsletter feels timely considering the impending (?) downfall of twitter. those who know me know that twitter has been an integral part of my personality since high school…my everything…my confidant…my right hand arm, man…
like, not really since I do have friends and a life, but i can appreciate a Cultural Moment, and twitter is/was definitely one.
On a more serious note, though, the variety of social movements that relied on twitter as a source of rapid information and communication (from the Arab Spring to the 2020 BLM protests nationwide) was remarkable. It’s demoralizing to see how the ruling class move with such deep narcissism and hostility towards people trying to survive our miserable existence. And both on a deeper level by quelling protest movements that threaten the existence of the capitalist, white supremacist, neocolonial hellscape; but also just like, we can’t even laugh and chat shit with people around the world? damn
so far, we still tweet. the ship is quite literally sinking and the orchestra is still playing. I certainly don’t know what lies in the bird apps future, but i hope people remember that it wasn’t all just shits and giggles…that website had a real tangible purpose, and maybe the threat of people collectively seeing that knowledge and building power was too much for Them to allow.
i catch myself thinking about space quite often:
there’s this woman on TikTok who talks about funky things in the universe in a way that makes sense to the average viewer (maybe in another life i majored in astrophysics, but definitely not this one). while i absorb knowledge about nearby galaxies, stars that explode and turn into black holes, and peculiar observances farther away than I can comprehend that scientists will spend the next years pondering, i consider something else.
i think about what kind of world we’ve created and how desperately i yearn for something better. I think about what we could know about space if we had chosen knowledge, curiosity, and respect for what surrounds us over money, war, weapons.
how far in space could we have gone if we put billions of dollars into honoring how little we know about the world around us? Could we know what’s in a black hole? Could we know who else is out there? could we know how delicately cultivated we are from space dust?
i grieve deeply for a world that could create instead of destroy. I find inspiration in communities that choose love and care over hierarchy and power. i try to lead my life intently weaving it together with people around me, instead of doing this all by myself.
it is not just space that, to me, represents the breadth of knowledge we’ve denied ourselves because of the past we’ve chosen— and i use we loosely, knowing that the denial of better is always has been upheld by a very specific group of people. i think too about the bottom of the deepest oceans, rainforests that have been allowed to flourish instead of destroyed for development; i think about animals that have been denied their homes, and erased from our ecosystem.
what kind of art could we make if not bound by the arbitrary constraints of capitalism? what would our interpersonal relationships look like? would we treat our children better? could we treat our elders better? what about family - how could we intricately connect our networks of family and friends to truly support each other? how much more deeply could we feel? could we honor our happiness, our sadness, and everything in between?
I’m not really sure if I’ll ever see that, but if i can experience, or even observe, even just the glimmers of a better world, maybe all that I grieve now will be worth it.
in elementary grade, the marks on our report cards were numbers 1-4, with one being above average, and four being bad (whatever that means for like, 7 year olds). I remember in second grade, I got a “2” in art. I was confused, and my mom was pissed (not at me). I feel like I didn’t really understand how something objective like art could’ve scored less than the highest mark (or maybe the school-related anxiety set in early).
Like, no offense, but it’s kinda f’ed up to call a 7-year-old mid — which is what I took it as. I can’t say for sure that was the moment when my insecurity around creativity and art settled in, but I definitely see that as a contributing factor. I grew up not really considering myself as creative or imaginative — I can remember distinctly thinking that more than once in my youth. I wasn’t one to continue things I was bad at (i’m still not — instant gratification ftw) and with art (painting, drawing, etc.) knocked off before I even hit puberty, dance squashed the moment I grew an awareness that my body was “bad” (we can unpack this later), and playing cello the cause of way too much stress since it was associated with a class i HAD to do well in — it seemed like I was destined to be logical, focused on the books.
And that worked for me — I was a giant nerd. Math came easy, reading and writing were almost fun, I picked up science well enough too. I did what I needed to do to succeed in things that made me smart, which I saw as the antithesis of creative.
I think there was also part of me, though, that wondered who I could be if I had some right brain-creative side. It felt like something was missing, and I didn’t know how to fix it. the answer came recently, and i don’t even think I realized it was the answer until even MORE recently.
it wasn’t until college when I unlocked the pandora’s box of creativity for myself, and it came by being a giant nerd. it came from curiosity and big questions with no answers about how we make a world we can all be proud of. a world we can be free in. a world that cultivates joy in the most mundane things.
the painful realities of oppressed peoples brought me to understanding the role of our imaginations - collective and individual, historical and contemporary. From the Black Panthers to the Young Lords, protesters in Ferguson to Indigenous climate activists — people who have been challenged by conditions, systems, and institutions that, to be frank, are working to kill them — imagination is a treasure that has created solutions that both tackle immediate needs, and presented visions of a new world.
i am thinking of programs to bring food to children, healthcare to ignored urban communities, land honored through tradition and belonging - not ownership.
i am thinking of abolitionists, who, in critiques of current criminalization and penal systems, present an idea seen by many as incomplete. they say “well, without jails, what will we do with all of the murderers and rapists.” the answer, in its acknowledgement that what exists now is not doing anything to prevent violence, is insufficient to people who can’t see beyond what is already in front of them.
and it isn’t to say that line of thinking doesn’t make sense — we are constrained by systems that want to squeeze every last drop of creativity out of us. the imagination is a muscle that atrophies with age, used for invisible friends, voices for stuffed animals, and games for the playground. when you settle into life— jobs, school, nuclear family— you take what you get. your wildest dream is how you can climb the corporate ladder, or the ornate light fixture you saw on HGTV that needs to be in your kitchen.
the demise of organizations like the Panthers and the Young Lords reminds me that the radical imagination is punished. people trying to build better in our world quickly become missions for the CIA to takedown. most of them never even have the time, too bogged down by personal responsibility to act on, or let alone conceptualize their wildest dreams.
it is a challenge to honor curiosity, to honor creativity, to honor imagination, and to critically envision a new world — but it is also a conscious choice.
today, i am choosing to imagine (no john lennon).
i am at a big oak table with my friends, hosting another elaborate dinner party, that i have spent the entire week preparing for. we are simply celebrating life.
my younger cousins play and laugh and celebrate their youth, while learning how to coexist with their peers - learning how to become whole with grace, kindness, and patience. there is no rush into independence.
my parents age gracefully, not counting down the days to retirement, but spending time with their aging parents, and taking care of their home.
my grandmother is sick, and receives better-than-adequate care at no cost to her. her illness is mitigated partially because she does not have to endure countless logistical headaches.
my best friend and her family manage the community garden, where everyone enjoys the fruits of collective labor — there is always more than enough for everyone.
people make art, films, music without being tied to giant corporations that decide what is worthy of seeing the big screen. the world is more beautiful.
when conflict arises, people come together, and acknowledge and repair harm. there are people in local communities who specialize in mediation; they are highly regarded.
maybe it sounds like a dream, or a fairytale.
maybe we have been so resigned to thinking this is the best we’re ever going to see, that it feels more unrealistic than it actually is.
i don’t really care about what my second grade art teacher thought of my work. a lot of my elementary school art teachers were kind of assholes, actually.
i care about doing the work that will help me hold on to my imagination. the work to make my imagination a reality. the commitment to keep myself and others accountable to honoring that we can do so, so, so, much better than this — and that we don’t need permission to start acting that way, either.
so, i am again thinking about space. i am thinking about everything that is trillions of light years away — distances so far that my brain cannot comprehend it.
i am thinking that i won’t ever get to know what’s out there, because the world before me has prioritized other, more destructive things. but maybe someone, someday will, and maybe i can help do some of the work to make that happen.
