Blog: There Is Never Regret In Living Your Life Authentically

Hi all,

How are we on the fine (insert time of day that you are reading this here)? Grand I hope!

I genuinely struggled with today’s blog topic. To be honest, I haven’t really been sleeping all that well & where I find myself in my day currently exhaustion has started to creep in & I’m feeling a touch loopy. So, if this blog takes the shape of something akin to a NyQuil induced fever dream, now you know why. Though I desperately hope that it doesn’t.

When I am at a loss for what to put down on this here digital page, I reach out to several different spots. The first is naturally a list of blog ideas that I keep written in a notes app in my phone. Nothing in there felt like it resonated with me. Next, I typically ask Evan. He tends to keep better track of the things I’ve either gushed, ranted, or hyperfixated on throughout the week, & while he had some great ideas that have been added to the aforementioned note in my phone, all of them felt like they required a degree of tact & thoughtful navigation that I simply do not think I have in me today. So here we find ourselves at the third option. This is the option of intuition.

Typically what I do when it comes to an intuitive pick, is I draw a few tarot cards & see if the message they carry triggers anything in my brain. As I’ve said a couple of times on this blog, tarot is not magic, it is not fortune telling, it is simply having an exterior prompt that sends you searching within to find something that either you are aware of & ignoring, or as a message of reaffirming. To be entirely transparent & straight forward, my daily affirmations that I post on my instagram story all come from my tarot draws for the day & how I interpreted them for myself. So I went to the deck.

Lately I’ve been working with a stunning deck I got called the Pacific Northwest Tarot. It uses flora & fauna as the archetypes for the cards & the author/illustrator/curator of the deck, Brendan Marnell, did an masterful job on them. Today I did a three card pull with no other intent in mind other than to come up with a blog idea. I got the 7 of swords (deception, impulsiveness, evasion, dishonesty, thievery), the 9 of swords (nightmares, fear, anxiety, worry, isolation, the things that keep you up at night), & the sun (positivity, warmth, success, fun, hope, clarity, healing, living life authentically & to the fullest).

Now this is just a hodge podge of cards. A stack of three with no assigned meaning other than what is traditionally associated with them. There is no one out there saying “this exact combination of cards means this exact thing,” it’s all up for interpretation. That would also be an impossibility from a task standpoint as there are 78 total cards, each with reversals. Each can only appear once in the sequence of three & if they appear their reversals can not. That leaves 3,651,648 possible combinations of just three cards. So the interpretation is really up to the reader.

So I drew a card of the thief, the card of the nightmare, & the card of warm authenticity. How do I interpret that?

Well at first I was a little lost, I’ll be honest. It helps if I put in place the general draw (the 7), followed by a question about the general draw (what does that allude to? what would solve that? what’s in the way or causing that? etc.), but I didn’t. My third card would typically be the solution to the two or the ‘what am I still missing here’ of it all. With these I simply drew the three & went about pondering them for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t until I was ‘bad’ & wandered over to instagram that the message clicked for me.

I’m sure that most of you are unaware that September is Bisexual Visibility Month, of which is a community that I am a part of. I got some post that was sharing that information, but also was talking about how amazing it is for those who celebrate, visibly, that we are out & about living our lives authentically & boldly. Despite the current political climate in the states or around the world, despite what our friends/families/coworkers/loved ones/employers/communities might thing, despite the stereotypes associated with the label as it being a halfway point, a place holder label, a slutty ‘choice’ of sexuality, or what have you, we are out here living our lives as bi individuals & members of the queer community at large. You see, the 7 is not just stealth, deception, etc., it is also feeling like you have to go it alone or that you can’t trust those around you with something. The 9 is not just sleepless nights & anxiety, it is also being afraid to mess something up, or feeling that you have messed up & the sun, well the sun is what cuts through the clouds of these illusions & allows us to live in its radiance & its warm embrace. My interpretation, between the cards & the post, was that I was being nudged to talk about this during a month of visibility for a community that is being met with erasure across the board.

I know for an ‘introduction’ to this blog that all probably felt rather drawn out & a bit off kilter for the main topic at hand, & such criticisms may be entirely valid. But this is my blog, & I am someone who finds the curious human mind a fascinating kaleidoscope of intersecting webs, paths, & tangents ramming into one another & fractaling off into endless avenues & inspirations. I thought you all might as well. After all, you did come here to read my thoughts & words. I also think the foothills that lead to the mountains contain their own multitudes worth exploring. Alright. Enough of me, time to the topic at hand.

I want to start this off with a story, or rather a sequence of events…which I guess is a story. I came out formally on April 28th, 2018. On that day the only person I came out to was Evan. He & I had been friends for a number of years, as well as roommates (they were roommates, if you know you know). He had come out to me previously & told me that he was in love with me, which I didn’t reciprocate to him (gasp). After a while I had urged him to start going on dates. The first one that he did I found myself a wreck. I was jealous, of which I usually am not, & I was overwhelmed. I went to the gym & ended up cycling faster & farther than I ever had before or since. When he came home from his coffee date, we talked about it & we went off to our separate rooms to end the night. I didn’t sleep that night. Instead I tossed & turned entirely confused & lost until I discovered a post by another fellow Kansas Citian, Janelle Monáe, who had just recently come out as pansexual. In Janelles post she talked about the specifics of pansexuality as well as the difference between it & its often bunched with sexuality, bisexuality. I recognized myself in her posts & the next day I told Evan.

We then spent the next week talking about the logistics of a potential romantic relationship between the two of us. I didn’t know if I would ever admit to being who I am publicly for fear of being maligned by the bigoted country music industry, I didn’t know if it was an avenue I wanted to explore outside of us & a few close knit friends knowing, I didn’t know if I wanted to tell my super conservative parents, I didn’t know if I felt like I could ever be with someone of the same sex long term or romantically. There were so many ‘I don’t know’s’ floating around for days, because I had never allowed myself to face this part or me. Even at the age of 27. We started dating four days later & have been ever since.

It was about another year before I told my parents, it didn’t go well. That same year I came out publicly, deciding it was important to be open & honest about who I am with those who hear the songs I write or the blogs I post. I felt that I couldn’t expect myself to make open & honest art without being open & honest in general. The almost daily 'coming outs’ were hard for a while. People ask who you’re dating & you have that panic in your chest that fights to decide whether to lie or be honest, but it eased over time. With every passing day, week, month, year I look back on my life & I wonder how I never saw the signs. I wonder how I was so readily able to lie to myself for so long, just to save face. Now I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine trying to squeeze back into that restrictive box. The box that told me that I had to be a certain way, behave a certain way, love a certain kind of person, believe in horrifically damaging things. It seems like a prison in hindsight. It’s not a space that fosters growth or thought or creativity. It’s restrictive & abusive, & not any way to live.

Now I think that I get more & more queer by the day. I don’t really care most days what people think about how I present or who I am seen with, because, let’s face it, most people’s limited outlook & their regressive opinions don’t matter. At least not to me when it comes to the topic of me. By happenstance I would say about 80% of the people I am close to are queer in one way or another. In fact, most days it's jarring to be around straight people. I love all of my friends, but man, that 80% are some of the most genuine, authentic human beings I can imagine. They live unapologetically & bold & they inspire me on the daily.

You see, all of this is a very round about way of getting me to the point of this whole post. That even when it sucked, even when I was fighting with my family, or getting cut off by people I thought were in my corner, there’s not a single day that I regret my honesty. Not a one. Because I am unchained. I am allowed to fly & stretch my wings up into the endless sky of possibility. I am no longer tethered to the rules of who I have to be to make other people happy or to fit into their idea of me. Besides, I’d much rather disappoint them than disappoint myself any day of the week. I also know that this is a sentiment that is not wholly & exclusively mine. Ask anyone out there who had to break out of the closet to be who they are if they regret it, they’ll all tell you no. Is it hard & scary & does it require a great feat of courage? Of course, but, my loves, the sun waits on the other side of the nightmare, of the deception. You deserve to live in the sun, to stretch upwards to meet it & bask in its warmth, not to shrink & hide amongst the shadows under the clouds.

I hope wherever you are, whoever you are, that you are choosing to live your life authentically & if you can’t for whatever reason, I hope you’re chasing that life at least. My loves there is so much to this world, to this universe. We are specks on the timeline of known history scratching at the surface of understanding. Dare to not be confined by those who are fine living their lives with no desire for depth & understanding.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: *Insert Title Here

To be honest, I’m here staring at my screen, watching the place indicator blink on what was a previously blank page with the word “blog:” typed in the title slot above. It’s been that way for about an hour now & while I don’t know if anything will come of it, I figured it was better for me to just start typing & figure the rest out along the way. I don’t know what this will be, if it will be anything at all. I can’t promise you that it will be worth your time to read or that it will change your mind about some goings on in the world at the moment, I’m just a guy sat at his computer, desperately trying to squeeze some creative juice onto a virtual page. At the end of the day is that enough? Is my lack of prophetic insight this week enough to classify it as content, is it enough to keep those who read this virtual collection of thoughts & experiences satiated for another week? I don’t know, but here I am, still typing away.

Maybe this will end up being more of a brain dump, at least that’s the direction it seems to be going following that previous paragraph. What meta commentary I have for you all this week. But I don’t outwardly know what I have that is exciting for me to talk about with you all, & maybe that’s okay too.

A part of me is sitting here saying “just delete the whole thing & go do something else, no one is going to want to read this nonsense, just call off the blog for this week until you have something interesting to say.” Then there’s another side of me telling me that that is a cop out. That I need to power through & put data to page simply for the act of doing so & to hell with the idea that having it be accepted by anyone as a genuine ‘blog entry.’ I can’t dictate how you feel about it any more than it seems I can come up for an idea for this week’s entry. But to some extent, isn’t this an idea?

Isn’t my rambling, my word vomit, some form of an idea? Because if I’m being frank, I want you to relate to me. Selfishly I want you to read this & understand & empathize with what it is to stare your weekly commitments in the face & come up dry with anything that you deem is of value. Which, let’s face it, we all can relate to.

If you’ve made it this far & haven’t snuck out on me, I applaud you & I guess I also thank you for your time & whatever persistence is driving you through this borderline nihilistic hogwash I am putting us all through. I can’t make promises that next week’s blog will be better or more interesting or that I’ll have a better grasp on a concept to present you all with because I don’t know those things & typically when I sit down to write with no knowing of where the blog will take my I eventually come up with something, but my inspiration is fleeting today it seems. Sorry for the run on sentence.

I don’t know if I can pull some profound meaning out of all of this for us to tie up in a neat little bow, nor am I sure that I want to, because in a lot of ways that would feel inauthentic & I fear would present me as a pontificating try hard. I truly don’t know where or when to wrap this or even why I continue typing as I am, but it is what it is I suppose.

I could, in theory, relate this all back to what it is to be a creative, to be expected to ‘turn on’ my creativity like a light switch, but that feels like playing the martyr, when in reality I’m so blessed to be able to do this. I’m blessed to have readers who return to this place like Nic Kidman in an AMC ad (at least that’s how I imagine it), I’m blessed to have the ability to afford a laptop, internet, a squarespace subscription, a domain, that allows me to have this public voice. I’m blessed to have a creative mind that I get to squeeze from time to time & I’m blessed with the aspects of myself that have drawn you all in to reading this, to listening to my songs, to liking my photos, etc. Again, no idea where I’m going with all of this.

I’m curious though. As I think this will be one of the last paragraphs of this open journey entry what this blog has left you with. What has it made you feel? What emotions has it brought up? Do you feel that I wasted your time or did you find some form of solace & comradery in my musings? Please let me know, if anything this blog has piqued my curiosity in the inner workings of you all & how you depart these brief sessions we share together each week.

As always,

Much love to you all,

…sorry I didn’t have something more interesting to say,

-C

Blog: Writing The Hit

I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve walked into a session & had another artist or a writer say “are we going to write a hit today?” to which the proper response is always “of course” or “I sure hope so,” because let’s face it, nobody wants the negative energy of a “statistically, probably not.” Lately I’ve been convening with a lot of different writers, most of the time over drinks or a meal, & this topic of “I just need to write a hit” has come up time & time again. If you’re someone reading this who isn’t in the music world, I don’t want you to tune out, because in actuality, the broadness of the topic at hand may surprise you!

When the notion of ‘writing the hit’ is presented to me it automatically stirs up feelings of commercialism, of pandering, of conformity, & that’s not to say that there aren’t things you should strive for in your art or expression, to an extent. I think that if any of these feelings detract from your art or minimize your personal experience they are a hindrance, not a leg up, & should be avoided at all costs. If, on the other hand, these sentiments match who you are & what you bring to the table, fire away, the goal here should be, after all, authenticity.

There naturally has to be some for of commercial viability for something to be successful, but I often think that the idea of what is successful based on what has been successful pigeon holes us into a narrowed scope of thinking. Instead of allowing the imagination & the self expression to run wild, we end up worrying more about whether or not what we’ve created or plan to create will fit into the already etched out niche of what has been successful in the past. I would argue that playing into the hand of the road well trodden may lead to limited success but it also stumbles readily into the realm of the forgotten.

People who are trail blazers, in any industry, are seldom, if ever, those who followed the status quo. They are those who followed their gut & pushed the boundaries of what was deemed commercially viable. Let’s use an example from a few years ago. When Billie Eilish exploded onto the scene & immediately became popular, every label & their mother scrambled to find the next her, instead of continuing the search for something just as unique. They all sought to capitalize on that which was already raking in the capital. This happens not only in the music industry but in literally every other industry I can think of where something is successful & everyone else hops on board to try to ride the wave that sensation has created.

A lot of those who I was talking about this concept of ‘writing the hit’ with this week are also artists & are looking for that one song that will break them, something I’ve heard for years & years & years in this industry but I find in doing so, in chasing the monetary or status based success, we diminish what makes us unique & interesting as artists & individuals in favor of a brief minute on the well worn path instead of carving our own niche & finding those out there in the world who relate to us as we are, not how we think they should.

People are pretty good at sniffing out a phony, call it the uncanny valley of expression, & their ride in the limelight is often short lived because usually the person who blazed the trail they dipped into is already making the trek better than anyone else could. Why? Because it’s authentically who they are. If you are an artist, an inventor, a painter, a poet, a writer, a speaker, a ceo, a whatever, you have a unique outlook on the world & life that literally no one else shares because no one else looks through your eyes & has the lived experience that you do. No one else has the same genetic make up, the same voice (literal & figurative), the same neurological mapping, the same beats of their heart, the same chemical values, the same stacks of cells that you do, so stop trying to fit into the mold of someone who will never be you & someone you will never be. It’s a lot more interesting to create something novel & authentic than it is to be just another wanna be copy cat.

I hope you all have a great week or weekend whenever this blog happens to find you!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Object Writing: Polaroid

We’re born into this world like a freshly snapped Polaroid; the image of who we are & what we contain takes time to develop. Sometimes, as this is happening, whether out of love or selfishness, people will try to point out our details to us, to guess or shape the image even as its still sits lost to obscurity. We, ourselves, often end up covering certain parts of the image as we violently shake to clear up the picture into what we hope it will be. We grip more & more tightly, pressing our fingers into the swirling black, preventing pivotal parts of our picture from developing properly. But lessons take time, nobody perfects life over night, especially if those lessons contain the parts of our beautifully composed photo that we’ve spent the longest amounts of time with our thumb pressed over.

Blog: Vulnerabilities & Rejection

There will be times in your life where people will come to you in their most brazen & honest moments. They will intrust you with information about who they are, what they stand for, who they love, what they do, etc. It is your job as a friend, parent, sibling, lover, mentor, etc to remain as judgment free as humanly possible & make that person feel seen & heard & accepted in those moments.

I’m sure many of you have already had such encounters in your life. If not, there may be a reason why. There is a lesson I came across a few years ago that has stuck with me to this day. I can’t for the life of me recall where I heard it, if I could I’m sure it’d be linked below., but he point of this discussion was “testing the waters” specifically where the ‘parent/child’ relationship is concerned. In the discussion it was brought up that children will often, as the name would imply, test the waters with their parents. They try to gage little bits of information on how their parents may feel regarding certain topics or use hypotheticals to see what the outcome would be if they were blatant, honest, & authentic with their parental units. Often parents fail the test, they give their child an answer that builds a wall or creates a divide & all of the sudden, several months or years down the line, these parents feel like they don’t know who their kids are anymore. That’s because their child has decided it’s in their best interest to stay resigned because they no longer feel safe sharing information with their parents.

So too do we do this to the people we care about. Our friends gage our responses on how we feel about certain things or our willingness to be openminded before they confide in us. If we don’t pass the test, the relationship remains shallow. I pride myself on being able to be the keeper of the true lives & selves of many of those I hold dearest to myself. You see I’ve built up an err of compassion. My friends & loved ones know they can come to me with anything, as their true & authentic selves & know that I will be grateful for their vulnerabilities & embrace them as who they are, accepting the information they’ve told me as their truth, knowing it may have been a conversation, confession, or thought years in the making.

We never know how long these machinations stew in the minds of our peers. It may have taken them years to have the courage to voice exactly what they’re trying to say, it may have taken years for them to even come to the conclusion themselves & they felt safe making you privy to this new found part of self. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this person felt it pertinent enough to tell you, they saw you as a large enough part of their life or even someone they thought they could receive counsel from. You have been honored with vulnerability, the worst possible thing you could do is respond with judgment or rejection.

The more occasions that your loved ones come to you with their vulnerabilities, the more you meet them with love & understanding, the deeper your relationships & bonds will grow. As a friend we can easily let those who reject us go or cut them from our lives but when it’s a family member, it becomes much harder. When holidays & family gatherings are still a thing for the member who feels estranged or like they can’t be authentic in those spaces, the time spent wearing that mask of “the perfect family member” can be exhausting & disheartening.

We are social beings, creatures of community, & when our chosen community meets our authenticity with a cold shoulder it scars, deeply. Feeling the outcast in an environment meant to cultivate & embrace your humanity gets very lonely very quick.

My challenge for you this week is to be honest with yourself. To look at the times where maybe you fell short of being the perfect confidante, friend, lover, or mentor when someone chose to confide something deeply personal in you. I then want you to reach out to those people, to mend the gaps, & in turn, to share your own vulnerabilities. I also want you to find someone you deem “safe” & foster a space to be vulnerable with them. Fortify that relationship, for as the song goes, “we all need somebody to lean on.”

I hope you have a fantastic week going ahead!

Much love to you all & appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts every week.

Thank you, truly,

-C