your art is love.
your love is life
love defies death.
your art is a matter of life and death.
One day, you will not be here.
One day, everything and nothing will matter.
One day, the pictures become painfully precious.
One day, hindsight will show you the life you could have lived.
Right now, you are here.
Right now, everything and nothing matters.
Right now, the pictures are painfully precious.
Your hindsight is available to you now.
Your life is available to you now.
Live that life now.
An amazing woman that's in one of the communities I'm part of passed a few days ago.
I didn't personally know her but I knew her work and knowing her work made me feel her.
I felt her life,
I felt her love,
It made me understand.
I think about what's left behind for the people that love her, the people whose lives she's impacted with her art and her essence as a human being.
It shows me that this work is literally a matter of life and death.
This work of creation is being tethered to your life- your life force.
This is not a silly hobby, just a little thing you like to do.
It’s the thing that reminds you that you're alive.
It rightsizes all the bullshit in your life.
Stay close to that.
The culmination of whatever gets created from that, that is your archive.
That is your legacy.
That is your gift to your loved ones and humanity.
It reverberates beyond lifetimes.
But in the making of that archive,
the practice of one thing at a time,
one picture at a time.
one painting at a time.
one line at a time.
That is for you.
That is yours.
That is for no purpose.
And every purpose,
the highest purpose.
life and death.
Because if this work isn't a matter of life and death,
if it isn't taken as seriously as your need to drink water,
your need to eat food,
then you're living your life having already gone.
I was going to a doctor's appointment the other day, and I had to wake up really early to be downtown. I thought about how that feeling of waking up, getting your shit together, getting dressed and leaving the house, going to work every day- it was expected, accepted, automatic.
And now, only now, after a horrific pandemic, has the world been open to seeing things differently.
Now there is mysteriously this new leg to stand on with feeling like we have the right to expect choice in how we spend 40 hours of our life a week.
Decades and decades before it was never even questioned.
this makes me sick.
Generally, it just wasn't questioned.
This is just life.
This is how you live your life.
This is just what has to be done.
It is bullshit.
It is all these imaginary rules that, yes, have real impact in our lives,
but it's like they're designed in the hopes that we will forget our own power and the preciousness of our fucking one and only life on this planet.
This is why the pictures are so fucking important.
Pick up your camera, pick up your phone to take a picture.
When something inspires you, when something impacts you, when that magical subconscious thing goes through your body and before you know it, you're taking a picture before it's even a cognitive thought-
that, those.
Look at those pictures.
Stay close to that.
You are those pictures.
and I'm not even necessarily talking about “Art” (even though it is)
I'm talking about your iCloud photo scroll.
I'm talking about the normal mindless snaps.
The dog ears on an experience of being awake in your life.
An image that is carefully crafted? they are essentially the same.
It is all you.
All just different channels of the diamond of you.
These are mirrors for you trying to tell yourself,
“Hi. This is my life. This is me. I love, or I'm impacted by this. This is important. This resonates.”
These photographs are breadcrumbs.
They are our internal GPS system.
They are our cheat codes.
They are a map for when we feel like we are so far out to sea we cannot see land.
You can only see what is already inside of you.
You can only see, accept, process, respond to what you are available to see.
We are always looking for evidence of our beliefs,
of our deepest subconscious everything.
That is what's going on under the water of the iceberg.
That is what's always happening.
And sometimes what we see above water is confusing, unsure how it relates.
Or worse- we belittle it.
“Just this is a little thing. I just like it. It's not that serious.”
No, it is fucking serious.
This is your life.
Immerse yourself in the things that remind you of the truth.
Because the truth is,
only you know when you're alive in your life.
And that can look like anything.
You can be alive in your life when you're in spreadsheets because you love it.
And that's fucking amazing.
You can be someone that actually loves going into an office and having that dynamic in your day.
That is amazing, if that is you.
If you're someone that is highly sensitive and can cry at the delicate sight of a leaf, don't hide that.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU FEEL AND SEE DEEPLY.
Do you know what a superpower it is that you could cut through the noise of life to see that leaf?
Do you understand how hard it is to taste the undercurrent of life with everything that's thrown at us?
You have everything you need to make the most of your time here on earth,
to make the most of your experience on earth.
Even when it doesn’t feel true.
Especially when it doesn’t feel true.
And when I say make the most,
I don't mean the most productive- “I'm panicked, I need to write a book, I need to do this, I need to do that.”
I mean, it is urgent every single day of your life, to hold your life.
Get your hands in the clay, be in the things, the experiences that you love.
No matter how big, no matter how small.
That is your number one priority.
And when you live like that, it's like you're immune to even the most horrific things. Not immune as in they can't happen to you, immune as in you didn't waste your time.
You can live a full life every single day.
It feels like someone's shaking my shoulders- sick with grief over learning about this incredible fucking woman leaving us too soon.
and I look at her pictures
the pictures of her
the pictures of her art
her children…
And I think,
“oh, that's a life.
That's a life that was lived, felt, touched, tasted.
That's a legacy.”
Life feels very complicated, but it is very fucking simple.
Love.
Stay close to love.
Stay close to the things that click that instinct in you.
Build your life around that.
Build your life around your love and the most valuable thing you have-your time. Spend the majority of your time feeling alive, whatever that means for you.
You don't need permission from anyone.
You are your highest authority.
You are the sun, the moon, the stars.
When you get grounded and centered in the life that you would live if you knew that it was fleeting, if you knew, like we know, but we pretend or we forget, live your life like that.
Take your pictures seriously.
take your joy seriously.
take your laughter seriously.
Treat yourself like the absolute precious, sacred being that you are.
Treat yourself like you treat your children.
Treat yourself, like you treat your most beloved pet.
Treat yourself like your joy can impact your children’s, children’s, children because it can and it does.
Give yourself, the gift of loving yourself in this lifetime.
Love yourself into life.
Today.
Do something.
Anything.
That is loving yourself.
Whether that's slowly, delicately, making yourself a cup of tea.
Walking outside barefoot.
Crying in a pillow.
I don't know.
Whatever it is- connect to yourself and love yourself.
If you don’t know where to start, look to your pictures.
They will tell you.
This feels like the most urgent conversation we could be having.
Show me what being alive looks like for you today:
In Loving Memory of EJ HASSAN.
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