1/10/2021

I came into 2021 thinking things would be fairly different, but its more of the same, while the Earth gets slightly older in age.

The end of my 2020 felt like a scramble. My blood pressure was a warning sign. My systolic pressure reminded me of my transition into my thirties––a special club for Black folks. The pace of work I chased since I was 18, working the second shift of moonlighting projects, is no longer sustainable. I needed to slow down. I decided into this year, inspired by Chiquita, to take a project sabbatical for the foreseeable future. My brain and body is worth much more than the pressures the outside world places on it.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about extraction, especially in this industry. The sneaky ways in which people, who recognize what you have, find ways to get it from you. Picking your brain. Let’s have a quick call. What are you up to? Especially Black artists, we seem to be especially expected to give this type of labor. These wolves––dressed in the clothing of modern liberalism, bangs, and a love for Run the Jewels––find ways to prop themselves on the backs of our minds.

Other than that, I recently put some thoughts to paper about the relationship between augmented reality and audio storytelling. If you have any thoughts about it, I’d love to hear from you. Also, I recently read this book, Transcendent Waves by Lavender Suarez, and it was utterly fantastic.