i have a recurring conversation with myself and others about how all art is already just garbage, because it’s expendable/excess/not “useful”. And isn’t art, by virtue of its creation outside of those constructs, a worthwhile endeavor?

i realized a while back that in order to create art i would have to remove the possibility of gaining from it. i made everything super low stakes, like at those uncomfortable but cozy cheap diner booths (hallowed be thy name) where i used to build sculptures of all sorts of actual garbage—sugar packets, straw wrappers, those little cream cups and butter packets. All the jellies! Always, just as my masterpiece was looking fantastic, somebody doing their job would sweep it away. i love diners. i did this at every one. It became a joyful thing: creating just to lose.

All of life anymore is creating and accepting that we could lose something from it. We must keep creating even our very own lives in order to continue in ways forward rather than stop. This isn’t just about art anymore. What would happen differently if instead of thinking “life is short, YOLO”, i started thinking: “Life is long! But each experience is brief af”? Everything is already garbage. This moment is already gone.

Anymore it feels like we must pursue only our own personal versions of being alive, both in body and spirit. We are finding out that we have to make subjective rules about safety. We’ve also found ourselves making time to talk to only those we really genuinely want to. It seems like every day is a new opportunity to take good care of each other and ourselves. And a lot of days we don’t get it right, but we are honing in.

Life is sad and beautiful and difficult and sometimes really mean to our hopeful hearts. Everything each of us cares about is so deeply impermanent. Because of this, i think we must care as much as we possibly can about all of it. From the smallest garbage art to the most cherished heartfelt dream. We must love it all relentlessly until its inevitable, always too soon, change.