In 2018, I sat down at my desk. I was poor and pining. I had been immersed in philosophy and was applying what I learned in graduate school (about political philosophy) to the real world through activism and advocacy. I was also struggling with symptoms of schizophrenia and feeling like that disease had taken everything away from me.
There was one person I thought of when I felt down. It was someone I had fallen in love with but didn’t see anymore. I had a few keepsakes that I kept in my room and looked at them when I wondered if I would always be a schizophrenic, wandering the streets and being put into psychiatric units.
Unrequited love, which is what I thought my feeling was, hadn’t been something I read about in philosophy. But I knew it was present in literature, poetry, film, and music.
I had been listening to a lot of music and thinking about how artists often have great philosophical insight. I wondered if philosophers could have good poetic insight.
I had won several awards for my poetry and prose. But I was rusty. As well, I hadn’t really found my writing voice yet. I considered everything wrote to be nothing more than an experiment.
But experiment I did.
I wrote a collection of poems and then recorded them on my crappy computer mic. I even burned CDs and created the visual art for them.
Art helped me at times when I’m pretty sure I had the “thousand yard stare.”
Who I loved doesn’t matter. Whether my art or readings are good is beside the point. And, yes, the recordings suck.
I’m putting this out into the world at a time when everyone is trying to monetize their hobbies. I have tried that, too, but I would rather do some things for the sheer pleasure and let the world make of it what they will.
