Stay Alive

Angels,

I don’t even know where to start. It is a strange world we live in; My heart oscillates between fury,   despair, resilient hope, exhaustion, engagement, and back to fury again. But there is certainly and most always a heaviness I cannot shake. Mostly, the feeling is- where do I begin? How can I use the platform I have to reject hatred and narrow-minded thinking without being hateful or narrow-minded myself? How can I exercise empathy and kindness when there is injustice, and a major faction of people supporting that injustice? Is there a part of me or my lifestyle that is contributing to pain in others? My fear for this country does not only lie with the current fascist regime of the T***p administration, but for staunch supporters of this regime as well. How can I begin to understand someone’s thought processes and viewpoints without my own biases and traumatic stressors being triggered and inviting judgement? Could I really see myself going to lunch with someone who would reject refugee children? Then claim that rejection is in the name of safety? Also, HOW THE FUCK am I supposed to promote music right now? It seems so trivial.

I just don’t know. I don’t know where this ends- but I am deeply afraid for our country, for the earth, and our future. It does feel like we’ve woken up in a dystopian twilight zone, on the brink of WWIII, and then I all I want to do is hide. Curl on the couch in heaps of blankets next to the cat and my partner and pretend that there is no pain outside. And I know that not only that desire, but the ability to hide, is it’s own kind of privilege; something that contributed to the tangled evil and seemingly impending doom. But I have to believe that humankind can and will demand better, more loving action and rhetoric from our chosen leaders. And music can also act as a part of that dismantling; Radical self-love and vulnerability, especially from artists, especially from marginalized people, is the nemesis of active oppression. I remind myself these things- and also understand that I may not be able to always show up in the way that others can, and that my contributions to the upheaval of tyranny may look differently than some, but if I remain as engaged as possible, alive and awake, and intentional with my work, then that is the best kind of combat I can think of. One of my favorite quotes of all time is:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
– Howard Thurman

I’ve been working on my EP, called Bold, and will be announcing a Kickstarter campaign on Monday. Again, I am grappling with the bizarre notion that creating, releasing, and promoting a pop record in the state our country is in, could even remotely be somehow…important? Or helpful? I’m not sure. Maybe that is a comfort I am telling myself to feel better about this potentially tactless act? Nonetheless, I have to trust my instinct, and my instinct says that being a shameless fat, bipolar lesbian is it’s own kind of “fuck you” to the patriarchy and the systems that are in place to keep people quiet.

Stay safe, stay awake, and protect your heart. There is still love in this world (also chocolate cake!). I care deeply about all of you and I am glad you are alive, because sometimes the hardest thing is just getting out of bed, sometimes survival is the most radical thing we can do. Stay alive.

Love and light,
Mary