It’s been exactly a week since my open mic/art show party on Zoom and it feels like much longer. I know I blogged a little about my trip to the gallery on Monday, and I spent 4/20 listening to records, but it is Friday night/Saturday morning now and the last few days have been busy too.
To start, I took a short photography walk the other night…
I also found this sticker that my friend told me was a white supremacist group.
So I made this sticker
and stuck it over the hate symbol…
I started doing a Facebook Live the other night after a stressful day but stopped towards the end of my song because I was fighting a demon in my mind. Sometimes that means I think of the most fucked up or offensive things I could possibly do or say in that moment, and it takes everything I have and more not to do or say it… kind of like Tourettes except that I’ve always been able to control myself to not say or do it, but this was the first time it happened when I was rapping and I had to stop in the middle of my performance so it didn’t just spill out. I’m glad my boyfriend was the only one watching. It was scary, because of course I don’t wanna say some super offensive thing that I don’t even believe, but I can’t help what pops into my brain and it sucks that I have to fight it like that sometimes. My struggles with this kind of thing started when I was fifteen, right after I got out of my first hospitalization at McLean. I remember going to a school play and leaving early because I had such a strong urge to bop the people in front of me over the head throughout the whole first half of the play! I was sitting on my hands until intermission and then left. I didn’t know them or have any problem with them, and I didn’t wanna hurt them, but was overwhelmed with an urge to bop them on the head; which would have been a problem if I did it, and I knew that but my brain does annoying shit to me. It’s like a pinched nerve in the brain or something. It’s similar to my Exploding Head Syndrome, where I have auditory hallucinations of horrible sounds as I fall asleep when I’m overtired. I’ve heard machine guns, drums, cymbals banging in my ears, explosions, feeling like my head is being zapped, and even hearing people calling out for me by my old name. I don’t understand why my brain does it, but my brain was thinking the exact opposite of what I was feeling when I was trying to rap the other night, and because I was rapping so fast, I was petrified it was gonna just spill out, so I turned it off, but I made a video of one of the songs after, without the pressure of the live audience. Here that is.
I forgot to mention that I was given this cool easel from The Armory the other day, hat may go back as far as the Armory itself. It’s definitely kind of old, but it seems to be more sturdy that the one I had and it adds a little character to the room, which will be spotless in a few days after the cleaners come for the first time in 3 years.
I also made this awesome pizza this week. I’m about to heat up a leftover piece in a few minutes
Other than that, I’ve been hard at work cleaning, putting things together, taking out trash, walking, taking baths, playing the keyboard, querying a few more agents/publishers, playing with my cat, listening to records, re-watching Game Of Thrones, talking to my boyfriend, and whatever else I do. Unfortunately I only made 13 days in a row of my daily meditation before I ended up skipping a day, but I’ve done short meditations every day and am using the meditation music to fall asleep, plus playing the keyboard is good for my soul. Unfortunately I didn’t get to that 56 days in a row higher place that I was reaching for, but that’s okay. All things considered, I’m doing good.
Last but not least, I will leave you with a song by Shock G of Digital Underground who sadly died the other day. He was one of my first hip hop influences, early on, the first time I got into hip hop. He was such a unique character with radio hits that we heard at dances and roller skating rinks. Not long after him, NWA and gangsta rap took over and I stopped listening to hip hop for most of the 90’s, but when I got back into it in the early 2000’s, I actually used to rap The Humpty Hump at karaoke, and that was part of what lead me to start writing and rapping my own stuff. People used to go wild when I did The Humpty Hump, and I was even joined on the mic by the rapper Katastrophe once to perform that song together at an event with Michelle Tea and the Cliks. So, RIP Shock G, and here is the song that you will always be remembered for…but I also know Tupac got his start as one of your dancers….
This one was huge for me in middle school too…
Peace and doowutchyalike….
