Punk is forever.

Recent research has shown that the music you listen to as a teen and young adult will shape you - forever. Think about what you were listening to then. How do you think it affected you? I certainly know not all of us were listening to songs about unity, freeing political prisoners, and human rights in general. Since I grew up in pre-internet times in rural PA, I didn’t have a lot of access to anything beyond. I was hungry for art and music and community. One of the main things my friends and I connected over was music - we cherished our traded mixtapes, CDs, and eventually digital playlists. We went to shows, to gather, to meet other people who felt like us, to feel accepted. Pittsburgh has its own breed of punk rock, too. It’s deeply planted in our local history as part of the rust belt and worker’s rights. I think about the determination of a bunch of kids, to get to a freezing cold fire hall in the middle of a snowstorm in Johnstown (before we even had GPS), just to sing along to a few of our favorite songs, and how that determination has shown itself in the years since - to challenge the systems, to refuse to accept the damages of our society, to talk to each other, to organize, to act.

This year has been especially challenging. I reflect on who we are, as individuals of this community, and how we’re doing in 2020. We are making art and music. We are spreading knowledge and supporting each other. We are raising money for others. We are feeding others. We are making masks and donating them to people who need them. We are setting up testing stations. We are marching in the streets. We are speaking out, making calls, organizing to educate voters. We are trying to keep our families and workplaces safe. We are demanding better wages. We are calling for justice. For healthcare. For education, For freedom from debt and capitalism. We are (virtually) holding each other’s hands, reminding each other to rest.

I have known that this group of people is bright and passionate, but this year, the way everyone has responded, makes me love them all the more.

Being sensitive, holding space, and radical hope.

For a long time, I would be disappointed by people for their actions. I couldn’t understand it and I always felt let down by their behavior, as incongruous to how I saw them. Not all that many years ago, I realized that this is because how I saw them was incongruous with how they actually were - and that my mistake is inherent in how I use what I see. How to put it? I’m sensitive. Not just in the way that got me made fun of growing up, but also in the way that I have access to other pieces of information that aren’t exactly within the “normal” range of experience. Some of these things are categorized as psychic and/or empathic abilities, like being able to actually feel what someone else is feeling, in my body. And all of this information can be really confusing and overwhelming - especially when it’s all tangled up with trauma and unhealthy dynamics. But back to what I came to understand about my experience of other people, I realized that I am able to tune in to who a person really is, and I experience this knowledge at a feeling level.

There are ways of knowing that are intuitive, and the more we learn to use them, the more we come to understand about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. I think that artists are in tune with these abilities in different ways. Learning that I have a strength when it comes to claircognizance (knowing) and clairsentience (feeling), has been very helpful to me. Now, when I meet people, I know that the sense I get of them has more to do with their greatest potential than the level they actually operate on. I’m able to stay out of situations where I, because of my empathy, obliger tendency, and familial relationship templates, would be blindsided and taken advantage of. I know more of a difference between who I am, what I’m feeling, and who someone else is. That might sound crazy, but if you’re able to pick up on all kinds of information and don’t know how to/ can’t process it, it can be VERY confusing.

To parse out all of this info that’s coming in, I needed to put boundaries in place. I needed to have help and support creating a practice. It has to remain in place this way for me to just feel semi-ok. Lately, it’s hard. I want to hit pause on everything and just paint and process. Just staying grounded and mindful is much of my self-care.

The idea of radical hope has been getting me through. It’s been so important to me at the core, and the more I contemplate, the more I realize that radical hope is at the very foundation of who I am. It is tied to the reason that I sense people’s potential state, not just the current one. It’s the reason that I can know, absolutely, in my bones that something is righteous. (Not that I am right, but that a concept has a righteous feeling, I think about it, and my body just knows). It’s like having a sense of direction, knowing which way is North. I’m just orientated to a different set of parameters that is intuitively defined, and the concept of radical hope is a compass.

Radical hope is essentially having hope in situations that have absolutely no hope. Radical hope is wise hope, not toxic positivity. It is a hope that doesn’t deny the reality of our suffering, but chooses to see it all, and take action.

Writings by Joan Halifax, Rebecca Solnit, and Jonathan Lear explore this subject further. I find the concept of radical hope to be in alignment with Catholic social justice teachings, and present in the punk rock community. It’s active. It’s defiant. It’s also very present in post traumatic growth, where there is space, often uncomfortable space, between what happened, what is, and what will be. It is in this space that we may act. This is what my work is all about. Holding space for the truth and the capacity to transform it. Radical hope.

What a great realization to have.

I have known that the work I do is about holding space - for people in portraits, in installation work of shrines and imitation relics. There is repetition of information, movement, shifting of forms. These constants have existed, and I can only see them now that I look backwards through time and media and a plethora of projects. I’ve focused on the beauty of an individual, seeing what makes them true. I’ve created experiences - literal spaces to be in, and prompted an ignition of radical hope in the face of systemic injustice. I’ve made bowls filled with intention and set them on fire. I’ve sought community through my work, connection to others to create a shift. I’ve tried time and time and time again to capture visually, something that I know in my bones, that I feel and experience, that is completely invisible and goes back to the concept of space. It is wild how filled with radical hope it always was, and how I lacked the descriptive words to say it. I have them now.

My work is about radical hope, and I want to share that with you.

Hold on.

I read somewhere that today’s date is Blursday the somethingith? That seems correct?! How are we all doing out there?

How am I? I am frustrated, angry, sad, furious, heartfelt and full of love, shut down, wound up, choked up, exhausted, strong, defiant, silent, screaming, full of hope and rage.

(But like, more so than normal)

I have been hanging onto words and paint and music. (Again, more so than normal) Aaaaaand Animal Crossing. That game is an absolute delight full of art, music, and silliness.

Also, the universe is sending me clear messages this week, and it’s weird in contrast, because everything else feels so foggy. There have been so many synchronicities happening that I’m starting to laugh out loud about it.

One of those messages I’ve received being, “It’s time for me to dig in.” So I’ve been thinking about the meaning of that, because my nature is typically to do exactly that. But it was presented to me in a way that meant maybe I’m not… Maybe I have this “skill” of being able to dig in, but maybe I’m not applying it correctly? Hmm. This feels as true as today being Blursday.

This feels like a call to a “this is it” moment of self-commitment and truth, all else be damned. What a weird moment of frightening clarity in this space at this time. I’m just going to hold on.