I’m the only one  that this life has ever known: and the gravity of that scares me, to be real.

I think about my username I claimed online.

I think about introducing myself.

I think about lies, and truth.

I then think about play.

PLAY:

Your inner child never grew up, they aren’t left in the past, it is still a part of you.

Let me remind you, I am no guidance counselor, just an artist.

But I do believe art guides us, to our subjective whims in imaginative speculation, searching for truth.

So let me guide you.

I will begin with a memory of mine. As a child, I enjoyed reading, drawing, painting, show and tell (though my stage fear has yet to leave me), I also enjoyed designing games. Yes, because I played video games from a young age, and I was familiar with interactive story telling, but also because I have always deeply enjoyed bending my consciousness to be attentive, aware, imaginative, daydream, to get lost in the rabbit hole. 

And I have found more of myself down this wonder, more than I ever expected.

I found endless words, spewing from my fingertips, onto my dad’s broken laptop. 

Tracing the letters over and over, G I G I, to login to this imaginative online world I had yet to meet.

And I have accepted this lately:

You can love, but still be disappointed in the way things turned out.

That is my opinion on the internet, social conformity, and political state of the systems of profit that ensure systemic violence.

I notice this in my own work, in my relationships, in the depth I found looking into the eyes of this world.

I am educated. I am privileged. I am grateful.

I am also independent, I am resilient, I am brave, even though my heart consistently bears the weight of fear.

So I am asked, as an artist, how?

What medium, and what tools, and what passion, and where did it come from.

But I ask, what helps?

PLAY:

Your inner child never grew up, they aren’t left in the past, it is still a part of you.

This again, is the part that is inexperienced.

In this state, you are unknowing.

In the face of doubt and fear, as if staring into a cave for the first time, you imagine.

This part of you, is vulnerable.

To play is to construct a string of ideas to create a game of problem solving in story telling.

To win, you must be yourself, love the game, and try again if you lose.

Let me conclude, that people in power want to control your game. 

This is no childish thing. Play is fundamentally a momentum for change in imaginative generative creation.

I encourage you to use your form of play, and dance, sing, scream, sew, doodle, draw, paint, write, play with the prompt to prove that you’re real.