I don't do anything in order to cause trouble. It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble. I'm proud to be a troublemaker.
-- Sinead O'Connor
I think grief treats me best when I'm channeling the people I've lost through my current living. For example, the best example I can give of this also goes back to music. There are a couple songs that I love, that I'm really drawn to, but they're songs I'm loving because I know (a close friend who passed away) would love them. And so I am loving them through him. Or there are things I know how to make, to cook or bake because I watched my mother do it. I think grief treats us well when these parts of people that we've gotten to enjoy greet us warmly. That's the real gift, to say I am not just one person, I am multiple versions of a person and some of those versions of myself have been loved immensely by people who were so incredible. Through their loving of me I have a richer texture, and that texture that allows me to navigate the world in ways that I am not equipped to do so on my own. And that means that on my best days I get through the world, through the challenges of living, navigated by a whole host of people who have created a generous blueprint through which I have learned to maneuver this life well.
If I hope for anything as an artist, it's that I inspire certain people to be who they really are. My audiences seem to be people who have been given a hard time for being who they are.
-- Sinead O'Connor
My process now if I'm in a state of depression or anxiety, both of which I have lived with for much of my life, I ask myself in the morning, "How good do I feel about being alive today?" Thankfully these days, more times than not, the answer is at the very least, "Pretty good." Some days it's "very good." But there are some days where the answer is, "Not very good at all." And then it becomes a descending clock. It's no longer, "How do I feel about being alive today?" it's "How do I feel about being alive this hour?" And if the answer is still "Not very good" then it's, "How do I feel about being alive in the next 20 minutes?" If the answer is still "Not very good" then it gets a little more urgent and I ask, "What curiosity can propel me towards the next five minutes?" If I move through the day I will find an accumulation of things that propel me to the next day where the answer might be different and better.
I'm of the belief that one doesn't move past loss. Or at least in my life, I don't move past loss. Grief makes a home within us if we allow it to ... I believe that I should be a generous steward to my grief. If I tend generously to my grief then it treats me well in return. That means that each time I'm confronted with the grief, I have a new depth of tools to move through it. Understanding that grief is not only tied to death or loss, but grief of the various heartbreaks we live with.
In some ways music, if nothing else, builds these small monuments to people that I can always hold onto. There are songs that operate as monuments to people I've lost and they make a park of monuments that I can return to.
