Art in your void

The one you didn't know could sing so softly.

I truly believe that right now, is the best time for everyone and anyone to make art, more importantly to share it. The floor is the lowest its ever been, and through it, the stakes are the highest. But flip it a bit, why is everyone so terrified to share the art? As themselves?

It’s in the eyes, it’s where the glares meet yours, it's the anticipation that going viral will happen to you, too. Eventually, but only maybe. I want you to use your voice though. The one that only the cavity in your chest knows. Only to speak in tones, only to parse through the atonal sound of yourself, turn it into the melody, even.

I think we all have the cognition to see and feel it. It’s right there, in that cavity like before. The art, the melody, the tonality of our beauty. All in which burns to our wick if not shared. So why not? Your fire will run out, you will burn through your sculpture, your shape...we all die as we lived.

Pass it on, burn into the seams, become the inertia that continues, not towards your burnout. But into the next phase, the next canvas, your next brush stroke! I want you to let it happen. I want to see the light, I want to be drawn to it like the moths need it more than their life needs them.

Hypnotically linger, just in the spaces that can hold you, or inversely, can't. You're meant for it all, not in the physical areas you can carve with an artwork but in the metaphysical chasms you breathe into anyone who wants to reside in it too. They'll be there, with you, more so.

Is it crazy to shout into the void? What about when it speaks back to you? Now it's becoming me, now I'm drawing near. Then you want it, then you become it, or did it take you? I took it? It took, my hand? This time...softer than before. Embrace it.

Forever I've been writing about seeing the nature of the void, all its personifications. How I would curse them - it. I told it to go home, I stared towards it until I found their eyes, then I yelled at it - once again. Go. Home. It left, but I forgot it had pieces of me, in themself too.

And you don't plead for it to come back this time, it always finds me, it knows where to appear. I do not. So now, I soak down into my own tempered waters, to drown in myself - more than ever. But you don't drown there, I take deep breaths until there's no more to intake.

The rush of it, it’s intoxicating. There's pieces of you there, of me, there's a world like Atlantis in those beasts. I want it to be your home, with mine. No need for purpose, for Gods, for anyone other than fragments you can build yourself from. Anything else would be nauseating.

Anything more is laboring, and after a while, I found the void in it. It seemed lost, it sounded nostalgic, it looked like…me. And for the first time there, I peered for its eyes - the ones I kept missing. They were closed still, and while they are, you can't tell where those eyes may be. Every mark on them, blends towards the next.

I'm forced to stop and stare again - like I used to. For a minute I remembered the fear of doing that, for the very first time again. How in that moment, I wanted to overpower it. I wanted it to go away, I’ll push it away this time, never let it in, even. However, I extended a touch, so timid like, anew.

It didn't flinch, it moved from my despondence...away from it, more than anything. It felt my fear, and assumed an even more pitiful state, so I reached again at it - instead with no dissonance on my part. I had a guard to drop, so I shattered it instead.

I took them in, right as the execution of my safety began to fade. I felt its cold. All its overbearing weight, grief...how it twitched to the down beats of my heart, in opposite - the offbeat, the inverse, the cracks in between me. It filled those - me…up.

It shook for a while, reminding me of the first time, I too, shook alone during a panic attack. The first panics I had growing up, it was just like that. I think it was that, actually. The form I had in me, during that distress. I knew it this time, however. It was me, right in my chest now.

It always was me. Though it, nor I, could sense this kinship. I started to comfort it. I transferred my heat, my warmth, my strength, without a second guess. I ripped out a piece of my heart. Almost giving it to them too, and as it braced to be revived with it. I threw that piece of my heart, aside.

I threw my heart aside, I threw myself aside. To welcome it back into me. It didn't even join me at first. I coaxed it towards myself. I beckoned it - guiding them towards that now hollowed out cavity that once held a heart of mine, I laid the frameworks for it to follow - and dare I say, it followed? It perused me, and after what was only an instinctive afterthought by now. I felt it reside, right there - in what was left of me. It relaxed even, I too, more so.

And at the same moment of inception, of an atom splitting, of a cell dying. It could finally breathe again. There was no heart that skipped, nor change in faculties, no rhythmic anomaly, even. It wasn't on an offbeat, it found itself synchronized - suspended, yet on an ever moving transient in time. Not quite like mine, or myself, but more as my compliment - being able to call it myself, this time. It made a poly-rhythm, a fundamentally new rudiment - a call and response to each minuscule beat. It now, founded a harmony. Not in tonal accuracy, but in the way we can finally amplify the same negative spaces we’ve carried along side us. Those same stricken caves we would have called ourselves, our hearts, our God forsaken souls, even - until now.

Finally, at the same time, on the same beat - without lingering on top of one another. I am whole. We…are whole.

And that's why I sought out the void. The heart will eventually die, it will one day, stop. The space my void encapsulates? That is an eternal slumber, that in its liminal aspects - it finds the lucidness to linger...forever. In anyone, anything, it may touch…that it may grace, even.

So give it your graces, give it all. Make it yours. Or it will take it, it wants to take you, more in itself. I struggled to find a breath, I drowned in the deep. I fought for it all, just to find it was nothing. That I am nothing. Without though, it's just me, it's always been me.

So love it, I love it, and me. Maybe you too. It can be forever, for there are never rules, just predispositions you found acclimation with. Love regardless.

And thank it, too.

With love,

Alice