Making Things
Transcript:
It took a long time for me to wear the things that I sold or eat the things that I sold. This is firsthand experience. I'm not pointing at anybody else. I first had to enjoy the things that I made, but. Even that in and of itself, if it's coming from me, it's me. It doesn't matter if I agree with it, don't like it, I must understand it.
And everything that I made looked like nothing that was outside and that irked me to high hell. It bothered me internally and it bothered me because while there was a part of me that didn't wanna ruffle any feathers, that didn't wanna go against the grain, there was a deeper, more unfurled feeling of to hell with it. This is what I want to do.
Everyone has their ways of telling you how you should go about this and that, and what you should do and the perfect steps you should take. And when you do this, make sure you do that and make sure you talk to this person when you do that, and all of those things while well-intentioned and Ill-intentioned lead a human being astray. Because you are so focused upon the checklist and filling in the boxes that you're missing the piece of the pie. You're missing the key element, which is the thing that you want and to hell with what comes; the thing that you want. In the creation of making clothing and wearing that clothing it was, it's necessary for me to respond to the things that I feel as opposed to looking outside of myself for answers.
Yeah, sure. Those answers may come in the form of a conversation or an intersection with another or something but that's still all internal. That isn't deemed by anybody else. That's my own experience, that's my own judgment, my own correction, my own awareness. That is something that I had to endure.
That has been the journey of making things for which I am moved by. Not for anyone else, things that I am deeply inspired by. What, whatever it is, songs that I truly wanna sing. We can even get deeper: in the key for which my voice register is aligned with naturally. Not singing out of key, not a rhythm for which doesn't work within my natural rhythm.
When you're young, I rapped on any beat. If it was available, I'd rap on it. The beats were fully formed, but it was a struggle to get through those songs and it was a struggle because there was no room for me to actually craft a song. For others that's different, but I'm talking about my experience.
For me, it's like I need to craft this. I need to know the entirety of what this thing is, so that way I can build it. And I can also fit within it or take it where I need to go. But it's like you coming into a home that's fully furnished and it's not your own and it's a home that you wanna live in and live in with your own things.
You can't because it's clustered, it's filled with other, with someone else's stuff. And so it's about getting down to brass tacks. It's about getting down to the fundamentals the fulcrum of how things begin, and the journey of making products has always been something that pulled me because while I made them, not many people bought them.
Not many people buy the products, but I was still moved to make them. Why? Who cares why? And as I begin to go through that journey and understand that it actually, it's irrelevant why I make it. There, there came an understanding by not trying to define it or make an excuse for it. It's a lot like having a child who is so truly singular, which all children are, so singular that as a parent who may feel embarrassed by the child, you are constantly making apologies for the child in public. That's what that relationship with my work felt like. Having to explain it and perhaps define it a little bit and give it context, and at some point, for a given individual, you come up you come to a juncture where it's irrelevant because you find that this is just always gonna be the case. It's like people who complain that it's cold during the winter and that it's too hot during the summer. At some point wisdom will set for a person like this is been here before I've been here.
It'll be here after I've gone. The wisest thing for me to do is to, naturally, embrace the seasons as they come, because whether I don't, it doesn't matter. They're still going to arise. They're still going to come and go. So it is me that needs to adjust. It is not that that needs to adjust to me. And so in the process of making things, it came a realization that this is me.
The things that I create come from me. They come through me. They are really the clearest opportunity that I can get. And I continue to refine that, but it's the clearest I can get to getting a semblance of what this thing is because I, I don't know who I am, I don't know how I move. I don't know.