The Finality of it All

I've been thinking more and more about when you know something is ending and is there such a difference between a beginning and an end? This sounds like an age-old question and it will always be relevant because, ultimately, we go back to birth and death, and those two things are on an endless cycle beyond our control. To be more specific, I'm thinking in terms of writing and art and the creative process, and maybe I'm at a standstill where I have no choice but to start answering my own questions.

My sort of journey with writing and publishing and making things and how I go about it has been unconventional. I've never sent a query letter and I don't check Publisher's Weekly. Whatever book or film comes my way, I treat it like I'm meant to read or see it for whatever reason. Years ago, I experienced jealousy towards other writers and artists and resources they were given. I'd ask, well, why didn't I go down a more traditional path? It's a common but pointless question to ask about oneself because everyone has their own way and series of events that follow with what or who they are.

This winter, I have a project coming out. It’s a collaboration with a new friend and a forcefield of talent who I'm very proud to make art with. I get a little secretive with projects before they're released because I enjoy a little mystery, but most of all, I'm protective. It's the one quality of mine that I truly don't deter from, the act of protecting. I don't know, I have a dad from the Bronx and a mom from Miami, and maybe it’s environmental or hereditary to share what’s innate. But I believe in this project, and I hope it’s seen as subversive.

It’s as autobiographical as any project I've made for the past ten years. I don't churn out work every second, but after ten years of it, I kinda feel like a Kardashian. My book, Harsh Cravings, is a diary, really, written in 2020, and a lot has changed and been experienced since then. This new project is a follow-up, and in my mind, a conclusion, a bookend. So, what does that mean? And what now? For the first time, in a decade, there’s a wide open space and I'm not sure how to navigate it.

I could start something new. I could finally write a screenplay. I could finally delve into horror, which is my love. I bought clay a few months ago and started molding weird shapes. I have a cheap Instamatic camera in my backpack, and I take pictures of things I see around the city. It's not that I don't want to write anymore. I just might be done writing about myself (this post excluded).

Part of why I feel protective over this project is because of where I went with it. I decided to go all in, address emotions and unresolved issues and all this stuff that has caked up in the last couple of years, and I needed to release it. Now that I have, it's a little scary, this new space.

I look at certain things that I'm dulled by or that don’t matter. Success to me, is not releasing a book from a mainstream publisher and asking for reviews on Amazon. Nothing is quite what it looks like. Success is not getting attention online. If anyone was content with getting 1,000 likes from a half nude post on Instagram, they wouldn't keep doing it everyday (unless it truly benefits a career, which I can’t hate on). It's a cycle that were pressured into. There’s no allure or sexiness in it for me. It looks and feels like addiction and I can be the most tedious, repetitive, addicted person in the world, if I didn't get bored.

As much as I search for something new, I know that the past repeats itself, over and over in different ways. I think that the past comes back again because it needs to be remixed. That's what I find exciting. I don't get bugged out anymore and say, oh what the fuck, this is happening again. A smile emerges, some may call it a smirk, and I plot. I wonder, what can I do this time that's going to throw off the cycle? Even if it repeats, again, it's another chance to thwart it, to show authority and to tell it: I'm in charge, even if all signs try to tell me I’m not.