Meandering Morning pt. 2

I think it should be illegal to criticize other's public art if you've never shared your own in such a large platform. We should all have to share our art so publicly before raising sharp criticism. It just seems so clearly immoral, reckless, and harmful to our collective as a whole. It's also disturbing. It's disturbing to entertain how many people are so deeply depressed, repeating cyclical patterning of unconscious ill will upon another's creative perspectives. There are so many people so willfully destructive that they may effort towards minimizing the striking and bold vulnerability of others in order to feel more seen themselves. In order to validate their own life's presence. We've ousted the coolness factor behind cynicism, labeling it masculine, advocating too often for the devil to remain socially acceptable in the zeitgeist. Criticism is "lit" though. And no, not the intellectual debate kind. But that of human beings doing and sharing their most quintessential forms. You comment how much you hate the way Becky does her hair in her youtube tutorial, or the basic and mediocre song Jonathan wrote. You spend thoughtful time artfully crafting just why you hate so many things. It's in our millennial bloodline. It's criticism, and often, it's entitlement. And I know it well. I know it best in the dark. I know it's most shrewd voice in my ear speaking belittling words to myself every time I think about my bank account, or decide what to eat for a meal. I know it on my way to auditions and I know it's voice overlapping on a track of repetition between glances, words, and silence traced between conflict with my lover. I've used criticism successfully to receive laughs and validation. I've used it to validate my own intellect. I've used it to connect to new people most immediately. I've used it when angry and disappointed in the way I have allowed the critical shame monster to imprison me with neurosis keeping me from sharing my creative gifts, leading me to sink in, to feel small and useless. When you know how much you have to give, and you know that you aren't giving it because the opinions of other's are holding you back, you feel selfish, and empty. And that's what that crippling fear does. It makes you selfish, withholding all the love, connection and unique perspectives that you were brought in this carnation to share. You know people are yearning for it, but you just can't bring yourself to share it for the same reasons that you find yourself taking such thorough craftsmanship in your critical comment. You know that others will do the same to you and your soul's work. We live in a time where the degree of exposure that is accessible most immediately to all of us in the social space is some of the most fragile and dangerous positioning one has been able to find themselves in throughout all of history. No, we are not experiencing famines. Disease is often treated. But our mental health has no protections. There is no refuge from such exposure. When I see others express fiery criticism of inspiring, creative vulnerability, no matter how big or small, it's almost as if my fears have manifested most largely. And often, they're even bigger monsters than I had previously dreamed up. I wish people could be conscious around the mediums we're finding ourselves exposed through. Not fully seen and far too seen at the same time.

Meandering Morning Steam of Consciousness

I don't have many photos of my early twenties, I know. I roll over staring at the bookshelf, running my teeth across my dry lips from left to right. Right to left. Am I even alive? And who decides? My best friend growing up was always the one to take pictures of us, of me. She even made my first myspace. I'm just not very good at making sure my memories are able to hold the long term value of a photo. Who needs commitment, right? I could ask why I don't have more photos, although I know well and I'm not proud of the larger reasoning. I'm able to pass the more consistent reasoning off as being committed to “being present,” which helps me honor my denial's best college try. So many of the best moments I have had were many in which I did not want to disturb, almost out of fear that all at once they might disappear if I were to interrupt them, like my restaurant jobs in response to some midnight “talks” with managers in which I wouldn't stay for a glass of wine knowing that the next day my job may have vanished. The real reason I don't have more photos as of recent, I don't know what's real. It's also why my illogical fear of wonderful moments disappearing overwhelms me to the point of conscious belief. Is this a passing phase? I mean, this is my life? Maybe? I can't always tell. So much of my life in LA feels like a walking, eclipsed dream. So ridiculous, it couldn't be real. There's no way that I actually live, permanently, intentionally in a place that all four of my first best friends each moved away from. Like dominoes, one-by-one within a span of two long years I said hello and goodbye to the only people that made the city feel real, my life feel real, or even acceptable for residency. Sometimes I get lost in how unbelievable it is for me to imagine that yes, there are people who push their dogs in strollers and call them their children in a genuine way. And yes, there are people who fully lack any spatial awareness who have been fully accepted into the culture of this place I call home.

I weave in between smiling, awkward, lonely, yet “comfortable” (the word I like to use when framing my inner monologues around class) people at friends of friend's parties at their parent's Hollywood Hills home, or running into another ex's friend at a yoga studio yearning to scream out, I DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY, and I hate you because you do!!! I walk around dragging my crippling fear that at some point it may become so obvious that black ink will ooze out of my pores, beginning to write it on my face for them to see, or they'll just hear it in a dream. My bubbling rage feels so overwhelming that I fear I may unintentionally send it to them via subconscious psychic mail-order, writing my identity's address all over the box for their mind to open up in pity – my second worst fear.

My inexhaustible insecurities about class, silenced in rarely broached contempt. Is that why it turns so bitter? If only I were able to more openly interject it in between my millennial astrology jokes at these parties of people, or at check out at the hair salon upon opening up my Groupon, or when I meet someone and immediately feel such envy? They say envy is supposed to be such a wonderful feeling, full of productive opportunity. I hate whoever this they collective is that always starts these trends. THEY started the whole, Does like attract like? And lack to lack? There aren't enough emotional boundaries to set in place in order to combat these notions once entertaining them, even once. They stay with you because it's human nature to use our imagination's fullest capacity to inflict self-criticism and what-ifs. Are these Laws of Attraction really so cruel? Are they truly this degree of insufferable libertarian keyboard warrior, cis, class-owning white man, telling you to go out there are pull yourself up by your Urban Outfitter thrifted suspenders? Or even worse, ARE THEY REALLY working class victims of the capitalist fairytale, aggressively sharing the good word of, “If you just work hard enough..” , in good faith, because they are so terrified that they may not believe it themselves. Because they know that they have to. Because if they don't, there is nothing to dream about. So they push on. They push their mansplaining, trite, neoliberal trash over into YOUR existential mind's driveway for you to fucking sort through, and yet again, self-criticize yourself into deciding what you actually believe about it.

I mean, I am a white woman with cis appearing, eurocentric features deemed “attractive” by the racist, anti-black beauty standards of our country's yesteryear, still stained in blood. I'm white and I'm talented. So.... I should be able to do something with that? Make more happen at least with those privileges? But then, lack attracts lack comes back again? Because what if I don't like that reality? Moreover, what if I hate that reality. What if I don't like that women that look like me are all so easily used for a Neutrogena commercial in a way that further promotes such dangerous, covert messaging about beauty, race, and class? What if we were all honest about our eating disorders? Another thing we can't talk about. What can we talk about?! Oh yes, our dreams. What we're doing to “make it happen,” and, “how it's going.” Until you're like, you know, I don't know. No one wants to hold space for “I don't know.” Everyone wants to know. Everyone wants their therapist to know. Their religion must know. Or their manifestation guide to know. People are so fucking desperate that they will pay a woman with a Silverlake hat, culottes, crystals, and a soft, just-masculine-enough voice a bunch of money every month to tell them how to be more “magnetic.” She talks about true authenticity. Maybe authentically I'm sometimes a depressive person screaming inside that if we don't talk about the taboo I am going to punch the wall. Maybe authentically the world isn't fair. It's full of injustices and shame and people who need more access to human touch and people unable to access to their dreams. I feel consumed with anger on their behalf and at these systems that I am supposed to work with, smile at, and rub my titties together for.

If you're reading this I want you to know that I only wish to validate other's pain as fully and readily as possible. And I hope to be held in a similar way. Following your dreams is often a lonely business. Following your dreams as an actor, is kind of like following your dreams as an inventor. No one believes you until you make a million dollars, and sometimes you find yourself in a place where you can totally understand Romy's Post-it lie. It's not just the fear of being an imposter that so impels you to keep quiet about your true dreams. It's other people actively implying, or even stating in so many words that you are the imposter whom you fear. It's like, FINE, I didn't invent post-its. I must be lying about everything! I'm just a big liar!