This is why I preemptively conceptualize myself as a being of complicated potential destructiveness, not as self-flagellation, but as a form of mental hygiene and letting go of things that do not serve anyone. I will make mistakes and unknowingly contribute harm to the harm ecosystem, but because I try not to derive my self-esteem and identity from being pure and ontologically incapable of harm (and also very specifically allow space to acknowledge traits from my shadow self and allow myself to be kinda just a weird creature with unexplainable impulses/interests I can observe in a petri dish for hours and still be intimidated by), it’s hopefully easier to deal with messing up and being imperfect. It is unhelpful to conceptualize myself as “contaminated” by either original sin or acquired problematicisms because that contamination is a social construct. This idea of contamination exists primarily to redirect responsibility and construct harm as an aesthetic, individualized thoughtcrimes, or state of existence rather than behavior that has material impacts and systems that facilitate suffering. I am holistically complicated. I can be summoned and manipulated by horrible entities in the noosphere due to that…….but I have worth and value anyways, and that’s the starting point for being able to move forward despite that.

Tonight I am excited about this little animation by @no-hygiene.

• This is fascinatingly emotional to look at in a way that is both odd/humorous and also genuinely very rich in like, what it communicates beyond the absurdism.
• The way the characters live in such different psychological spaces but are sharing this moment in a physically close way really intrigues me: The baby is either crying or cooing as it writhes pretty expressively. It is being a baby in a most unrestrained baby way. The babysitter, in contrast, is restrained and awkward. They look like they’re receptive to the baby’s presence but also a little hesitant to be there, or like they’re not sure what to do about the baby’s emotional energy. They’re a reluctant guardian. This contrast is enhanced by how anatomically strange the babysitter is compared to how relatively realistic and flesh-toned the baby is.
• The EYES. The eyes have such a je ne sais quois about their expression. Was that a little smile? Was that a little wince or frown? Was it both? Maybe this is just me being slightly autistic about facial expressions but there’s a lot of tension to it that is occasionally interrupted by whatever resolves in whatever that little expression is. I love the ambiguity. It feels very emotionally real.
• There are lots of different possibilities for how to interpret the relationship between these two characters, and each of them has different implications for the underlying narrative. You could read this as having the energy of an older sibling being given a younger sibling to hold, and having to deal with the experience of having a completely new, completely foreign family role placed onto them, and having some complicated feelings about it. You could also interpret this as related somewhat to the gender-essentialist parentification many people face due to assumptions of feminine childrearing aptitude. Additionally, you could interpret it as a cute moment where a guardian angel is given somebody to guard, or where someone is holding somebody else’s baby and having to deal with the awkwardness of having a direct unfiltered moment of human connection with a baby but also having to consider how to act, what boundaries to have, what social norms are relevant, and the emotions/protectiveness of the parent.

Additional interpretations:

• I am regularly expanding the aesthetic arsenal by practicing a habit of experimentation and openness to new possibilities.
• I release the deeply internalized and stifling urge to be marketable and easily categorizable by allowing myself to be unpredictable.
• I enjoy empathetically connecting with other approaches to making things and other artists by viscerally experiencing how those different processes feel when I am drawn to them.
• I like to see what visual motifs and things I am organically drawn back to across different visual approaches when I make things in different styles.

Everybody secretly wants me to utterly shred the wrapping paper like the creature I am for entertainment value when I open Christmas presents in front of them. However, every year I’m always the last to finish opening stuff because I carefully untape and unfold the paper and organize it into a pile of reusable wrapping paper pieces. Each gift also gets a big hug (or another comparable gesture of sensual acknowledgement) and a moment of appreciation, further extending the gift-opening timeline.

Sometimes catharsis is methodical and slow.

I have similar insecurities/anxieties. My current most unshared/least public medium is also photography (my music composition/production stuff is another). I used to have photography on my old portfolio website but don’t have a section for it at all on my new portfolio site. My relationship with it is complicated because the photography side of me sometimes exists in direct conflict with the illustrator side of me. I mean this in the sense that they began to compete for mental real estate and visual real estate, and these days, the illustrator side usually wins. The illustrator side of me is more public and yearns for more vivid, specific, stylized images than I am often able to capture in photographs, and I haven’t picked up a serious camera (like, a DSLR camera where you can manually control all the settings and really make all the aspects of it as a device part of the artistic process) in years. I don’t even know where my Nikon D500 is, which kinda scares me. I hope to get back into doing photography alongside doing more field sketching/observational/plein air stuff because it draws from very similar instincts. Hopefully they will cooperate.

As somebody who also works in multiple different mediums but feels different levels of emphasis/relaxation/comfort about which mediums I share stuff in….I think some of what can happen with this sort of insecurity is that you can end up being very focused on what one or two mediums you make stuff in mean to the shared, more public part of you as an artist, and then you build a lot of aspects of your existence/identity around them in a way that makes you feel very self-conscious of where the other mediums stick out in comparison. It’s so so normal for different mediums to sometimes feel lopsided in terms of how developed your relationship is with them (or how developed your relationship is with the audience for it) and how used you are to your work in them being perceived, or for there to be some incongruence about one medium being inhabited by a different side of you that you’re not used to people seeing.

I also think having at any point tried to do creative work professionally or for money can also really complicate this. A lot of career paths or garnering of audiences can require an almost brutal amount of specialization, pruning, and selective sharing (“only share your best work”/“only share what’s relevant to the job you want”/“only share what your audience wants to see or is used to seeing”).

The mental imagery that comes to mind is being a funky little bipedal/quadrupedal hybrid baby deer thing with legs that are different lengths. It limps when it walks on four legs due to the anatomical awkwardness, but looks elegant and composed on two legs, so in front of other creatures outside its circle of closest, closest friends, it decides it is going to prioritize moving bipedally. But the other limbs still shift in the shadows. The creature grows and changes but is self-conscious of its gait. I think becoming more used to being a funky quadruped that is a growing, changing thing with healthy inconsistencies and different facets is a long process when you’ve internalized the idea that some creative parts of you matter more than others.

I’ve also found that incorporating things I’m not used to sharing into formats I’m more used to sharing is really helpful for alleviating some of the anxiety about starting to open up about it. Blending photography with poetry sounds like an extremely good way to ease into it! It will probably help you orient it creatively so you know more about where it is in the constellation of creative stuff you do. And eventually, if you feel like it, there might be a moment where you realize you want photography to take center stage for a particular project. Who knows!

I think one of the coolest things about working in multiple mediums, from a “who am I as an artist” standpoint, is that despite the growing pains and inconsistencies, cool things happen where you (and also other people!) recognize similarities and consistencies about your process, vision, and why you do things across mediums.

Current mental activities:

• Spiritually connecting to the act of churning the gloop around me and catching useful things in my fingers, then releasing what I do not require.
• Thinking of the sensory memory of finger combing my hair in the shower and consolidating a clump of hair.
• Psychologically tuning into my digestive system and the everyday peace of not having to be 100% efficient, where I know that the byproducts of my existence will create nourishment elsewhere.
• Being g r e e n !!!

yeup. if it helps, you can always make them an adorable headmate, sometimes it's easier to do things that way and be more empathetic to your past self/ves if you're a bit more inclined to not be kind to yourself, as some folks struggle with.

I have no real concept of what I actually looked like as a kid, looking at childhood photos of myself has always grossed me out, so I picture my inner child looking like this:

That's the gross scrungly little creature I have to take care of. It smells like earwax, kitty litter, and dry blood.

• For me, the last song I listened to would be none other than “Feel The Heat Inside Of Me” (song by Pan Wei-Ju / 潘PAN). This would be weird and niche and fringe as a tattoo, perhaps, but it would also be objectively very very cool. I’d totally own having it on my body, maybe somewhere on my upper thigh.
• I also named a fanfiction chapter after this song recently. I will provide zero context for this here other than the fanfiction is about extremely psychosexual character engagements with cybernetics and cybernetic body politics and I started writing it to cleanse my palette from working on my main project, Existential Torso Compilation, but ETC followed me into it anyways because its themes are just Like That in my brain right now.
• As a tattoo, “Feel The Heat Inside Of Me” would complement “This Body Will Devour You,” which I would like to have tattooed on my torso at some point, and “Let It Be Incomprehensible,” which would be cool to have on my arm. I’ve been gravitating towards tattoo ideas that are words that are kinda weird, can have varied connotations (both philosophical and vulgar), and are very specific.
• “Feel The Heat Inside Of Me” is interesting because it’s technically an alternate/sister interpretation of another Pan Wei-Ju song that has the same lyrics but a totally different vibe. “FNGRMHRDR” carries more of an even intensity, is overall more punk, rock, or post-punk oriented (I would say its vibes are kind of along the lines of something that Special Interest might put out), and has an electric guitar groove going on with it. “Feel The Heat Inside Of Me” is more unhinged, menacing, harsh, and experimental, with the production leaning more into industrial rap pulse type beats.
• I do not have a single tattoo on my body yet.