The ‘Raw’ Gremlin Pt II:
U S I N G T H E V O I C E O N A N D O F F T H E S C R E E N
It was the last week of October when the conflict between Palestine and Israel reawakened a wound from the marrow of my bones. Early in the morning, I got a text from a friend in the US - “I want to stop posting, but I just saw your video on my timeline, and it reminds me to carry on”, it reads - to which I respond - “what the video I just took down because I wasn’t prepared to deal with the backlash. That one?” I felt like a hypocrite, congratulated for creating something I later retracted. But I knew I’d gone too far - I posted a freestyle with a knee-jerk reaction, which wasn’t true to my intention of expressing unity.
I made a freestyle that expressed my point of view, but I knew it wasn’t fully formed in love or from a helpful vantage point but rather a retaliation to the violence & hurt I saw in my timeline. Part of my anger was rage at the current state of affairs, and part of the anger was linked to something much deeper - the personal pain accumulated over decades of caring, defending and being attacked because of politics in the Middle East. This is the perfect opportunity for the anger to rise and be met.
“If the artist’s role is to reflect the times, and the role of an aware human is to seek higher consciousness, I had to learn to separate the knee-jerk artist reaction I had to war from the spirit of my soul.”
This is my calm, post-processing self-talking, but three weeks ago, it was all too much. I couldn’t sleep, I lost my appetite, and I stepped back from the people I judged didn’t understand, and that’s not healthy. If the artist’s role is to reflect the times, and the role of an aware human is to seek higher consciousness, I had to learn to separate the knee-jerk artist reaction I had to war from the spirit of my soul. Yes, I know that’s a paradox; on the surface, both are the same. However, the intention is different. One wants to fill the silence, and one wants to praise the silence.
When I am overwhelmed, it’s often not because of the news but the deeper wounds it triggers. The consumption of the current war in the Middle East spikes anger, outrage, and emotions inside me that render me useless to calm creation and strategy. When I get like that, I find it hard to craft art from the truth of my soul because the wound of my ego needs to be tended to first. So, I’ve started to monitor how I educate myself, how I share and the intention I do so when I share.
To take my time, step by step, we are all going at our own pace, and as I said before - the artists are the ones who offer their heart & soul and use themselves as a vessel.
When I posted a freestyle - whilst it was skilled, I knew part of it was in anger, and I had venom in my mouth. Hence, when I had encouraging and aggressive comments, I took them personally because, deep down, it wasn’t coming from the highest part of myself. When I express from the highest part of myself, I don’t care if it’s liked or disliked because I trust the truth.
“From that perspective, I couldn’t see what anger was because of my personal wounds of discrimination and what anger was because of my response to the war. The two are so interlinked in my body that these three weeks have felt like a medical procedure to unbraid my own experiences of racism, outrage and pain from the current destruction on the news.”
I deleted the post because I wasn’t expressing myself from my highest truth. Afterwards, I let myself be silent and calm down to observe what was coming up for me. From that perspective, I could see what anger was because of my wound of discrimination and what was anger because of my response to the war. The two are so interlinked in my body that these three weeks have felt like a medical procedure to unbraid my own experiences of racism, outrage and pain from the current destruction on the news.
There is wisdom in keeping politics, religion, and love out of public life; they are sacred and require patience to decipher, but social media asks us to have our answers fully formed. With social media, humanity is auctioned for performance and judgment. Social media is not a safe space to evolve, so cancel culture hasn’t been cancelled yet. We must take time. I feel much calmer, responsible and capable of expression because I took the time to witness and reflect.
When I see the war in the news, the artist in me wants to fight fire with fire; she wants to scream, express, blame, and cry. And yet, my higher self strives to fly above and see from a contextual, calmer vantage point. The higher part of me wants to use the hurt that’s coming up as a way to erase and emulsify the pain in my marrow. The higher part of me wants to get to a healed place where the suffering of others is met by action and clarity rather than distress and overwhelm.
