Applause Makes A Poor God.

I haven’t posted anything on instagram for 9 months.

I am under no misconceived or self-inflated notion that anyone has been missing the lack of content. A strange sort of tension started to build as time went on. I began to feel that whatever I posted next had to be amazing, had to top the last in likes and comments and engagement, and I lost sight of why I made art, why I shared art, and the value art has in my life and the lives of others. 

Since last June, there have been many different cycles of insecurity and doubt. I was crippled with questioning myself, “Why should anyone care about what I share? How can I believe others will like this if I don’t even like it myself? How can I ever create something worthy of anyones attention when there is so much content being pumped out constantly?” I do not want to be a distraction, or an aesthetic, or cliche, or like every other self proclaimed college student with a DSLR. I want to say something honest from the heart, made and shared because I care about it. 

I want to dig deeper than expected moments, to create images that reflect humanity. How someone felt at this time in their life, the in-between moments that make them themselves. And that is a daunting mission to take on, especially because I know that I will fail almost constantly. But I am not satisfied with making anything less than what excites me, what expresses who I am and what I want to share with the world, because I am human! My experience matters because of the inherent value I have because I exist, and I must rest unabashed in that. 

I am so afraid of the applause. Of it’s volume, of who’s hands are doing the clapping, and the echo it leaves is haunting and dreadful and ghastly. 

“Tell me that I am worthy. Tell me that I am enough. Tell me that I am all that you are not and all that you wish to be.”

I am compulsive in my selfishness, in my need to convince myself that I am not broken. That I am whole and beautiful and the bandaids are more than enough to fix my bullet holes. Applause makes a poor God. She is fickle and vain and will always be uncertain where her affections lie. I hurt myself when I look to her for affirmation, because she looks like so many empty vessels. I will always hurt others when I try to ignore this tendency to take from others to fill myself up. 

“Certainty is not peace, and trust is more than belief, and surrender is more than a verbal assent to the idea of surrendering.” – Levi the Poet

I will no longer apologize for making something that is less than who I wish I was, because the art of life is in the transformation from being broken to being healed. We must fight for hope yes, but also fight for hope in the things that heal us. We have to surrender ourselves to this process, which is uncomfortable and messy and meandering. I am not good at that, but I want to be better. Love, Joy, Peace, laughter, tears, vulnerability, art, music, dancing, pain, sleep, hugs. These are the things that give life, that make life valuable. And over and over I must preach to myself that applause is a poor God. Applause is a poor God. Applause is not a God I wish to worship any longer