cringe, art, and freedom

"i am cringe but i am free."

it's a meme, but it's also a profound saying (to me).

i've been into music and art for most of my life. i began to write my first songs around 10 years old and was recording by 15 or 16 on low-quality mp3 player microphones, "mixing" into Audacity and releasing things on MySpace, Newgrounds and SoundCloud. none of it was any good, but i just wanted the feeling of creation to fuel me. my first recorded album could be (politely) described as sing-along poetry. it had no guitars or drums. shortly after, i began to try my hand at recording guitar parts and singing over them, sometimes separately and sometimes together. all of this was variable-but-low quality, and not very listenable. i think the first time i was proud of a guitar release was my album, General Ignorants. it was acoustic with separate vocal tracks, and a lot of thought and care went into the writing and production for what my skill allowed at the time.

i dabbled with horrorcore rap for awhile and landed several shows opening up for some big names in the underground: Insane Clown Posse, TWiZTiD, Hopsin, even Machine Gun Kelly (before he got famous). i almost went on tour with Kung Fu Vampire alongside a now-defunct rap group. there's a whole story behind this time of my life i might share at a later time in either blog or video format.

i stepped away from the rap world and got back to producing acoustic and pop punk stuff. i put out my last album pre-transition in 2014 to decent reviews (among locals). in 2020 and 2021 i recorded several tracks with a friend in Cleveland, under the moniker of Des The Mess, but never released most of them. i ended up getting an article written about my EP. it's been 4 years and i haven't recorded much that didn't end up on Facbeook or Instagram.

things can be cringey (and often still are) but i continue to put out content in various forms. during the pandemic i got into graphic design and created a bunch of templates for shirts and other merchandise. i didn't advertise the business enough back then, but i want to get back into that as well, at some point. i didn't always love the pictures i was making, but i loved the process of creation. i have never stopped creating. my YouTube channel has been dormant awhile but i'm returning to that soon to finish the two series i started and see where else the video journey takes me. i've successfully uploaded a blog entry every week for close to 5 months. i still play guitar and occasionally write music. i even have an album i'm looking forward to recording eventually. i want to do it in the best quality i can, even if i don't plan on "doing anything" with it. i just want to do it.

i see some friends struggling with art, and others have this attitude of, "do art just to do art." i think the latter are right. to stop creating is to die a little death every single day.

so what if i do or say something that people think is "cringe"? well, it depends on the context, of course. a Trans girl making dick jokes and writing "sadboi" breakup songs as i do is cringey, but it's fun and it makes me feel good. i don't really care that some people don't "get it," or outright hate it. if i'm not contributing to sexism, racism, homophobia, and other problematic tropes, then i call it a win.

i also think there's a level of "misunderstood creative genius" that goes into being an artist. raising awareness around important issues using satire and comedy is a great example. the execution isn't always ideal, but it can make a message clearly known. gutter humor and dark comedy can bring people together on relatable situations and political issues. in ten years, maybe i'll look back on my work from this period and see problematic or challenging elements that either weren't on my consciousness or otherwise not part of the current cultural zeitgeist.

i guess a big part of what i'm trying to get across here is that, i'm creating because i love to create. being an artist, a writer, a musician, i have this urge in me to continue doing so. i don't care if people hate it or love it, i just do it. i post here every week and don't go out of my way to advertise it. some people like it and most ignore it. a few of my friends enjoy the reads, even when i say cringey stuff about free will or god, detail my history with conservative politics, or talk about going insane from LSD trips.

if you're here, i'm glad you are. if you've read this far, thanks. if you stick around, you'll see more of my work come and go. but i'm not going to stop any time soon. i'm going to continue to create... something, anything. the possibilities are endless. well, kind of. ultimately everything is a remix or a copy of another concept and few things are totally original anymore. but that's a topic for another time.

stay cringey, stay artful, stay free