I have a confession to make…
English is my second language.
Before I could speak English, the world didn’t come to me in words…
Instead…I felt something.
I felt the language of the soul.
And everyone speaks it the moment they’re born.
It’s our unique way of interpreting the world. Our unique way of feeling spaces. Our unique way of perceiving reality.
And this language is clearer than our native tongue.
Most of the time, when we struggle to find the words for something…
It’s because our first language was wordless.
Our first language is “experience”.
Think about what happens before you reach for a brush. Before you open a blank document. Before you hit record.
There’s a pressure inside you.
Not a thought. Not an idea.
Something older than that.
A feeling that doesn’t have a name yet.
That pressure is your first language trying to speak.
And an artist’s job is being a translator between two worlds.
The world inside…
Formless. Infinite. Electric.
And the world outside…
Pigment. Sound. Syllables. Light.
And these inner experiences are like water in a river passing you by.
No two experiences are ever the same.
And so what’d humans do?
We minimized our experiences into words.
Then minimized our words into labels.
And in that process, the infinite weight of our experiences collapsed into one point.
Before “blue” was a labeled a color, it was a the wide feeling of distance and calm resting behind my eyes.
Before music was given a genre, it was vibrations moving through my bones.
Before touch was called a hug, it was heat, shared breath, and the quiet assurance of a safe presence.
These labels are just an echo.
A shadow cast from something far more alive inside of us.
But what I love about artists is we bend…
We bend color into a picture that’s worth a thousand words.
We bend sound into music that makes listeners time travel.
We bend words into poetry like how I twist and stretch English in an attempt to convey these abstract ideas every Thursday.
And the beautiful thing about bending is that the creator is also being bent…
You are always changed by the work.
Every time you make something true to you, you understand your own first language a little bit better.
It’s honestly my favorite part about making things.
I don’t fully understand what’s hurting me until I make it.
I don’t fully know how I love until I make it.
I don’t fully know who I am until I make it.
The things we create are snapshots of our most profound experiences.
And they become portals we can step into whenever we need to remember.
Look, some things just can’t be labeled…
Only witnessed.
A cup doesn’t become the water.
It just makes it possible to hold and share it.
So like the potter bends clay into a cup to hold formless water…
Reshape the elements around you until it carries fragments of your soul.
And go water the world.
Stay creative,
