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It's been a time of great emotional upheaval lately, kicking up old dirt, airing out miasmas, the works. I feel like it's a time of good change, working towards something bigger, and coming out the other side feeling more in my skin.
The issue lies with the compulsion to devotion and in a sense religion with it all. I grew up culturally Methodist, but never identified fully with the religion. There was a period where I denied any and all religion out of spite to the institution I was in, there was a period I desperately wanted to believe in guidance or some power watching over me, but it eventually settled to agnosticm. That's where I lay, that's where I've been. Until lately, where Ive felt a pull to explore that side again. It began with a compulsion to draw the natural order, the intertwining of human and animal behaviour. I never knew what I was drawing, or what any of it meant, I just knew it was something bigger than my own words, and it had to be out of me otherwise it would burn a hole through me.
I picked up the music of Ethel Cain, ever the sucker for religious imagery, but her music and approach has made me question things. I feel drawn towards a devotion, not necessarily towards the Christian gods or organized religion as a whole but something bigger, more ancient//primal than that? Maybe there is a god in the world, the sun, the gravitational pull, the trees, the water, the butterflies, EVERYTHING IS A CIRCLE. Ritual, giving myself up in a way brings a form of floating comfort, autonomy? I don't know how to describe it.
It's been on my mind, i've been pretty vocal about it, and also my newfound love//fixation on Ethel Cain. I don't know. part of me wonders if maybe people think this whole schtick I'm on is derivative of this music fixation and in a way a performance evoked by the music. i don't quite know why it matters to me, i guess I'm just worried my friends are getting sick of it. i do not feel like the same person, there is something much bigger than all of us, even if it is not omniscient or heavenly, it is not us.
Mar 25, 2025
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i feel you so much !! even though i grew up muslim and heavily believed in it as that was what i was brought up with there was a period of time where i wasnāt as religious and it doesnt really get brought up that much tbh causw no one really knew about it and i was almost putting on this facade. not really the same experience as yky as music wasnāt something tbag got me back to feeling more of anmuslim or identifying with it more but along the way of trying to figure out who i am and all that stuff i kinda got pushed back to it and being more interested in learning about islam for what it really was and kinda just finding my love and faith in it and even know itās soemthing i stand by and sometiems try bring up that in my case even if i was born a muslim i still had to find it for myself. iām proud and happy to say that iām glad and happy with where i stand in my relationship with God/Allah but there can always be imrpovements to it
i hope that you can find that same peace in finding for yourself what you truly believe in! itās quite the journey with its ups and downs but im sure youāll figure it out sooner or later !! wishing you well on this path of maybe self discovery if thatās what you could call it ?
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look at all the art and cultural detritus you love, or whatever most compells you (even if you dislike it, maybe especially so!). see if there are poses, objects, creatures, ideas etc that keep popping up. these are your prompts!!
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½ to use my own expierence as an example:
i kept finding human-bird hybrids everywhere in the stuff i return to. angels, harpies, Sirin & Alkonost, etc clearly something about the union of beast/bird with (often femme) humanity to create something either deceptive and dangerous or divine and distant made me excited! so that became my prompt. it made me start having questions i could only answer through making art: how many ways can i depict a human-bird hybrid? what details transform it from an angel into a siren, or perhaps into something all together new and different? etc
this leads me to:
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½ explore mythology, fairy and folktales! i personally don't buy into the jungian shit AT ALL (and don't even get me started on joseph campell, booo) but! there's a reason these stories and their imagery have stuck around! they're endlessly fascinating and adaptable, and they make for a great first step to take in creating something that speaks to you and so many others across time and space
Jan 28, 2025
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alright, this is not like anything iāve posted before, but with it being Easter and all, itās on my mind!Ā
iāve had a complicated relationship with religion for the majority of my life. i was raised in the bible belt, so i found myself in a church pew, singing hymns and listening to a southern old man preach for an hour almost every sunday morning from the time i was a toddler.Ā
that being said, i wrestled with the idea of God quite a bit - i saw and experienced the hypocrisy and hurt within the church - i think i almost tried to get rid of Him; if being with Him meant i was grouped in with these people, i needed to get away. however, i then realized he would not leave me. he was knocking at my door; heād always been there, and he always would be. he didnāt shame, scold, or abandon me like i expected because of the people that surrounded me. in my most painful moments, i found myself crying out to him - i decided to finally go, āsure, letās see what youāve gotā. i believe that to be one of the best things iāve ever done for myself. time and time again, iāve started to worry about how a certain situation might go, gone āok, you take this oneā, and it has worked out more beautifully than it ever wouldāve had i tried to handle it on my own. even better are the times that something has landed in my lap that i couldāve never imagined would. sometimes, i go back and look at the little moments in my life that have gotten me to where i am now, and i think, āwow, God was there.āĀ
and you know, maybe it is all coincidence and all of these are just the little wonders of life, but i find it quite amazing and comforting to believe that there is a being of the highest power (whatever or whoever that may be for you) that loves you and genuinely wants the best for you. i think believing in something is simply a human trait; itās a healthy thing for us to do. sometimes you need to hand your anxieties over to the universe. sometimes you see the sun hit something in just the right way, hear a certain song, or notice how perfectly the human body is built to hug or hold hands, and youāre smacked in the face with the thought that there must be a creator. our souls should not have to feel that they are alone and bound to this earth and thatās it. it gives us something to strive to be like and live for.
having the freedom to believe in what we want to is such a beautiful thing, whether you choose to have faith in something or not. i think this is something i could go on about for much longer, so iām going to try and stop it here. there is so much wonder and whimsy in believing in something, and i think itās worth exploring. iām not even sure if thereās an actual point to all of this, but thatās it. thatās the rec!
5d ago
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working from what may seem like very surface level cliches but stay w me here
((tldr: why not just believe that its all working out for the better, even if thats not what you planned? also, empathy and objectivity are a solid duo that id like to see in combination more frequently.))
putting this at the top because this is a dissertation, at best; psychosis, at the other end of the pendulum.
sooooooo the fact that u have no control over life liek At All. has been a consistently terrifying concept for FOREVER as a shorty who is Clinically a control freak, but realizing that the unpredictable essence that makes all of this shit unnerving is the very thing that can take the weight of life off of your shoulders has been pretty revolutionary.
im still digesting/integrating it one bite at a time, for sure, so call me a hypocrite ESPECIALLY if you know me personally. when in clarity, though, its been so pleasant to realize that since Nothing truly matters that much since nothing is set in stone anyway- w regard to action, approach, fulfilling temporary expectations of yourself, whether or not you reach short term goals, etc.- living life completely and utterly for yourself and whatever that means to you at any given moment will likely ultimately be the plan that brings you most fulfillment, when all is said and done.
whether that means taking the risk and changing your major, taking that freaky elective bc it sounds cool, moving in w some randos in a townhouse, quitting your job and starting something new- maybe it winds up being an epic fail, who knows? as long as youre setting goals that align with an ultimate sense of who you are and what youre looking to get out of life, which i presume can be solidified further by pursuing said experiences just for the sake of it? right? helps u figure out what u actually want? and as long as you keep bareback essential priorities straight (financial and emotional stability come to mind), then theres no reason for impermanence to work against you.
this also counts for people, as well. i feel like we hold others to critical standards, as we should, but contemporarily tend to neglect the fact that people DO change. morals/how you view the world are impacted by experience, and we are all fruits of very very different trees. completely dependent on circumstance, of course, empathy/understanding/consequential second chances are side-swept under the premise of respect/accountability. accountability is CRUCIAL, but i feel like so many of us (myself included) take that to heart and forget that figuring out how someone got to some place is a key aspect of understanding whether or not their position was truly from a place of lack of respect? if that makes any sense??
i also have been thinking about this a lot: my best friend throughout middle school and i fell out the summer before sophomore year overā¦nothing? idk, 3 years of seeing each other every single day (neighbors) to no contact until senior of high school- still werenāt talking regularly or anything though.
2 years ago, she turned 20. i posted an old photo of us because, despite everything, 20ās a big one.
this year, weāve spent late nights on facetime, drove to watch the sunrise after hours of catching up on god knows what on the hill where we would listen to music while her mom cooked dinner, and sheās been my go to for any necessary bitching/ranting during whats been the worst year my mental health has ever seen??
time is your friend, if you let it be. connections arent a race in any dynamic, and itās never over if itās truly meant to happen.
let life change. i think.
Dec 5, 2024
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is it not smart to have gotten them and get more before im even 18? probably. wouldnāt tell you to do it
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do you ever just sit around and consume and create imagery of cervidaeā¦. the deer,.. they speak to meā¦
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