I read an article on how to improve an artist’s statement a few weeks ago. At first, it made me self reflect which is a nicer way of saying what actually happened. I fretted, as you do, about my life as I faced a truth I’ve known this whole time: my online presence is at best strange and vague; and at worst, disjointed and “unprofessional”.
I thought the article was on to something and so got to work applying it to the bidness. (Moon Spice Studios, if you’ve forgotten) I hadn’t thought I needed to up my game, but the article and videos on my feed since have convinced me that I need to improve. They’re going to teach me what to say to sound like I’m worth my salts.
As I start rewriting my bio, and drafting this snippet and that, I looked up from my computer to find I’d arrived at my favourite question in the whole universe:
Why?
What if I squeeze myself into any shape and I still don’t fit?
Pirate Bones, Natasha Beddingfield.
It was first grade and I was the most social of a butterfly as I would ever be. The imprints had, of course, already begun. The conditioning that tells us in our many forms all the ways in which we are not and never will be Enough. The same conditioning that tells us Enough is something we should always aim to be started young. By then, I’d heard all about how I was never lady-like; my family would often ask me if all I did was roll around in the dirt at recess. I hadn’t quite yet experienced the shame of having to suck in my stomach to fit into a pair of Hello Kitty pants, but when my thick, coiled hair wouldn’t submit to whatever tyranny they tried to impose, I was likened to a troll doll.
I couldn’t have cared less.
I could speak to the sun and the moon. When I called the wind, it answered. Besides, the boys would cry when I inevitably beat them regardless of my clothing so why couldn’t I play in my dress?
The imprints would persist regardless and my conditioning would settle. It would eventually show in the way I avoid wearing the colour white or the way I’d need someone to take the hot comb to my curls for picture day. Before that though, I had to contend with Ms. Alberts.
She was wrinkled like the sun had personally drawn the lines on her face. The deep lines and discoloured freckles added to my overall discomfort when dealing with her. She had strawberry blonde hair like Melody, my best friend, but unlike Melody, I’d never seen Ms. Alberts smile. At least not at me. At best, she grimaced in what maybe she thought resembled a smile, but as far as the first grade version of me was concerned it wasn’t part of her repertoire.
My grandfather had already started to bestow upon me the knowledge required to navigate the world on the bottom rung including winners like people are going to hate you for absolutely no reason. As good as a student as I was and always have been, these lessons didn’t help me clock Ms. Alberts as one of the first in line.
The classes had been segmented and structured even then, preparing us early for society’s backward ass modus operandi. It was our artsy fun time (official name, obviously) and we were given something specific to do: a single colouring page to quell a gaggle of six-year-olds’ desperate need for colour. Her yell seemed out of place when she did her walk through of the classroom and set her eyes on me.
“No!” Her wrinkles scowled at me behind badly cut bangs. “You’re outside the lines!” She grabbed the page from me. “Start over.”
Am I taking some creative liberties with this story?
Yes, of course.
Did a teacher really yell at me for colouring outside the lines?
Yes, of course.
More importantly, the imprint was made regardless. Sometime later, there would be a tree frog in a drawing book. I would mess it up for the millionth time and then, give up. I could not be made to start over again.
Maybe you want it, maybe you need it
Maybe it’s all you’re running from
Perfection will not come.
She Is, The Fray
Perfection turns out to be one of those entities that creeps like invasive vines until it is choking oxygen from lungs and brain. It pinches and squeezes through crevices that were never meant to be touched like that, filling them with itself until it is impossible to tell original from intruder. It doesn’t have any give; there’s no softness or warmth—only cold hard analysis of flaws based on asphyxiating ideals only the inanimate could hope to achieve.
Its voice is the same one telling me to straighten my hair which is the same voice telling me not to eat my last bite of food which is the same voice telling me ‘y’all’ and ‘ain’t’ aren’t proper enough which is the same voice telling me to do it alone which is the same voice as the school teacher yelling at a six-year-old for colouring outside arbitrary lines.
The voice told me I would never make a living as a creative so I never even considered it an option for fun until my late 20s. It told me to destroy my body because forget feeling good—the voice wanted me to look good. If I looked good—if I performed goodness—then I could feel good, but only once I begged for permission. I got the corporate job, and the husband, and the house, and the dog. The voice was unimpressed. It told me even that wasn’t enough. That my family would be better off if I didn’t show up until I was absolutely perfect or as close to it as I could manage. At any cost.
It told me to starve myself. Then I could show up.
It told me misery was a small price to pay. Once it was paid, I would have everything.
It gave me nothing but poison and I swallowed believing it to be medicine.
It, like Whiteness, wanted to erase me from the inside out.
I guess what I’m saying is perfection convinced me for a long time to forfeit myself for a life I would never belong in. It’s taken a lot from me all these years striving.
Obviously, I never quite got there. In part, because it turns out perfect means everything that isn’t myself. Because myself is tall, strong, delicate, sensitive, fat, politically ugly, black, divine, Nicaraguense, Jewish, afroed, precious, spirit-driven, mad, horrid, and ever-growing. Ever-changing.
Trying to fit all that into a small box called perfect was physically impossible, and my stubborn determination to try at best led to some misalignment and at worst, took years off my life and health.
If I didn’t start over, I wouldn’t have survived.
I am not afraid to fall
You can watch me lose it all
I’ll get it wrong, ’til I get it right
At least I’m making scenes in the meantime
Watch me get it, get it wrong at the top of my lungs.
Watch Me, Icon For Hire
Trial, tribulation, and surrender have led me to scrolling through my Instagram profile marveling and fretting in equal measure. Again. It was another round of “improve your existence” videos that started it. Should I archive more? Would it be better to have to have a more cohesive “grid”? Or whatever? Which quickly turns into: really? this is how we’re spending our time? When all the voices simmer, I’m left only with the evidence of how long I’ve stuck to my anti-perfect guns—of how long I’ve posted simply to keep a record of my existence; the books I’ve read to become this, the poems I’ve written, the photos I’ve taken, drawings I’ve made in the remaking of myself.
I find the jumbled mess of my posts bring me joy in the way opening a time capsule would even though it is only aesthetically pleasing in the way a familiar haunt is.
I have found in the quest of letting go of perfection (which, by the way, is not the same thing as attention to detail…) I’ve become suspicious of spaces and people that are too perfectly curated—too sterile, too creatively bankrupt—both online and irl because there’s a difference between something created and grown and something designed; I can feel the difference in my bones.
Scrolling through my own feed has me asking:
Is my favourite restaurant the hole-in-the-wall ma & pop shop where ma and pop and their kids have been feeding us for years or is it the place that has calculated with precision the nutrition possible for the least cost? Wasn’t there something somewhere about food absorbing better when a body is somatically joyful? Why should the media I consume be any less nourishing than my favourite spots? Why would the media I make be?
That’s why my intent with Moon Spice Studios has always been a space of imperfection and that’s incompatible with so much of this world. So, per usual, I needed to at least try to make my own. I had my website created and, while I can with pride say I did my darnedest alone, I enlisted help to round out the edges. In the same way I would have waited until I learned how to do it myself—in the same way I would have waited to let anyone buy my art before I had a website—if I had listened to the perfection demon, I would waited to launch the website until I had the perfect artist’s statement or about me section or a perfect blah blah blah. There’s always going to be things to do to improve. It’s been one of my favourite things these days to remember like oh yeah… I don’t have to get it right right away or at all and I’ll still be worthy.
And oh yeah… there’s enough time because there’s more than one way to experience time and existence than corpo-fascist, capitalist, colonial constraints.
And oh yeah… I made a whole ass fucking website dude!
I make this announcement not to say I’m falling in lock in step with the organizations and systems that want you to consume a very specific kind of media, but to say nourishment is so seldom perfect. It has to hit the depth of a belly and of a being. That takes digestion. That takes time. That takes more than what certain social media platforms have to offer me right now which is more curated perfection than is reasonable and a speed that is intolerable.
It is also to say I’m dedicated to nourishment regardless of how much time it takes because like a good meal I want to think back and crave it—I want to crave what I’m doing with all this.
I want to look back someday and sing:
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way
My Way, Frank Sinatra
Stay weird.
&
Stay wild, y’all.
