is it about being worthy or ready? where/when do worthy and ready bridge? no longer survival moding1, figuring out how to exist butters my palette. The gag is, Activation Residency was born out of survival — seeking paths beyond lack. Here now — bored as hell, and peeling back mirages of distraction. having enough time to have enough time, there is space to receive granular clarity on how i want to live even though not doing this would be more than enough. it is akin to the *i am here — now what?* feeling. grieving familiar has been entirely overwhelming, and cooking, cleaning, resting, and moving have been the medicine soothing the whelm.
so, agony, agony, agony, and then making is usually how it goes — making and unmaking bouts coming closer together so agony lingers less. making this next record feels like getting to know a thing after its inception, retrospectively. you can softly hear my influences, but it is mostly distinctly me — the usual acoustic guitar backdrop in some places, many whimsical synths, gestual percussion sprinkled throughout, delicately arranged ear candy, funky rhythms and throughlines, jazzy bluesy pop vocals and harmonies that heart hit — all about a person who decided to live on a planet loved by a burning star. we have put nearly 50 hours into the record and it shows.
initially compelled by an incessant queering and now concerned with queering’s evolution, i wonder about shaping collective existence, and when/where it requires another thing.
my therapist described me as curious this week, and it was affirming because i so badly want to view myself as such — familiar’s claws hard stuck. whenever i feel like i do not want to write, i remember Mar and write.
Estelle recently wrote about how upward mobility is not a shortcut to liberation, the dangers of living so, and what it actually takes to get free. in an upward mobile2 place, the work to get free is ever more urgent.
living to survive, surviving to live
three paychecks away from not making rent instead of one