I’m writing this with an ice pack on my face. Got my wisdom teeth out a few days ago. Everything's sore and weird but it’s all good, it gave me time to read the new Hunger Games book before I go see the movie (it’s a rule of mine) and oh my god is it brutal and eerily relevant given the current global climate. It’s a really strange and terrifying time, watching tragedy upon tragedy day in and day out and feeling a bit helpless towards it all, as well as guilty for being on the side of things where if I really wanted to, I could just turn the news off - like the Capitol side of the Hunger Games. It’s so horrifying that some people have no choice but to live in a waking nightmare and others just get to decide whether they want to pay attention to it or not. My heart aches for Palestinian people, my money goes to them, my support goes to them. What I will never understand though is the way that people are using the conflict in Gaza to justify antisemitism of any kind. There is a massive humanitarian crisis happening in front of our eyes right now, but it has nothing to do with Jewish faith and everything to do with greed and colonialism. Check on your Jewish friends, check on your Muslim friends, be the safe space and support system the world is aching for right now.
I’ve been turning the idea of necessity around in my mind a lot - with the current expectations of what an indie artist needs to do to “make it” being pushed on me by everyone who (rightfully so) wants to make money off of my music, it’s expected that I always have fresh content to put out, a consistent posting schedule so that I can “make the algorithm work for me.” But I, for one, do not always have something to say. And that’s normal. That is OKAY. It’s exhausting to pretend I do. It’s exhausting to convince myself to post everything I make or think about, ESPECIALLY when I'm not yet convinced of its merit. I love being a sponge. I love long periods of time where I just get to take things in, read what other people have to say, experience a brand new perspective and fully absorb it without adding my voice to the mix quite yet. Being in the role of observer for a while is deeply fulfilling to me and necessary when it comes to making my own voice something worth listening to in the long run.
I wish I could afford to do that. I don’t always feel like I can, but maybe that’s a mental jail I've created for myself and not a real limitation. Maybe there are other ways to find my people, that don't involve spending hours a week creating tiktoks when what I'm really dying to do is just be quiet until I actually have something to say. I’d love to learn how to succeed as a public persona without compromising my artistic integrity, but maybe I'm just being a bit of a snob. It’s just I'm afraid of being the shein of content, you know? A never ending stream of cheaply made (and ethically questionable) things that can be discarded in a heartbeat. Quality really matters to me. There's so much noise. I really would like to shut up for a while.
Pity party over, time to replace the ice.
- Ashlynn
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