Hoarding My Art Is A Coward Move, But Also Brave y'know
...and I'm not letting grammar stop me from newslettering
Howdy!
Veronica here! Did you enjoy the Cherry post? She’s all over the place but I stan. I’m very excited for this more real post of The Cherry On Top about my complicated relationship with my own art, some bruises around it and what I’ve observed is unique vs. the mental labyrinths that I feel many of us fall into. Let’s dive in. TRIGGER WARNING: Talk about death, ideations of suicide and memes.
From 2017 to 2020 years ago I ‘d get stuck in the following lame ass suffering loop: I’d get an amazing idea, feel like I’d need too much of a budget or resources in order to “honor” the “genius” or that the times where not ready for me, or that I wasn’t ready for the times. Then, because of this, I’d lose momentum and the fire to turn my “genius” ideas into tangible, real art you can click on. I’d get down in the dumps about my inability to generate and feel like if I was such a genius I’d be producing and believed myself emotionally disabled. Then another genius idea would come, I’d get excited again, find out my brain is too luxurious and I’d need high budget, lots of time, collapse in my inability, etc., etc., etc. I started floating in a limbo of frustrated creation.
After that cycle I’d started musing. I’d play out scenarios trying to convince myself that the best outcomes would come from the least amount of effort as to prevent myself from failing. In plain English, I was mentally looking for the most efficient way to Self-Sabotage. A word that sounds real French and fancy but it actually real French and dank. My go to scenario is: I leave all my ideas in my crusty notebooks and then die by my own hand (again, just ideations, mental scenarios, please don’t romanticize this like I did), I’d have someone find my sticky notebooks, that person would, of course, have an amazing sense of art and immediately realize “A GENIUS HAS LEFT US” and then dedicate THEIR lifetime to my art. The kind stranger would make sense of all my scrawls and half ideas, rule out grocery shopping lists, revenge fantasies and dream journal garbles, extract the PURE GOLD and then turn it into fancy things that smell good (books and perfumes) and products that click at a high price. I would posthumously become a fat Wikipedia page (BTW my Wikipedia disappeared… I believe I have a secret enemy), or an expensive NFT and finally achieve my dream of being EPIC. Except I wouldn’t know epic, I would be dirt and worms.
Being dramatic, intense and camp is great for the stage but horrible for coping. Eventually I did find this hilarious and started laughing at my own sense of grandeur. Ridiculous but also: A true suffering. Then I’d snap out of it and laugh at myself. LOL bitch, quit playin’, just live and take care of yourself, who’s gonna curate all these masterpieces if it ain’t you? Hoarding my art was a coward move of self-sabotage.
“…when I die someone will turn my life into a Frida museum! IF they manage to piece together all these *genius* notebooks” - am inaccurate quote from me to me
Truth is, I was hoarding my ideas but I also was genuinely stuck between my ideal world and the real world. I didn’t mean to hoard my ideas but I couldn’t help it! I’d choose to suffer in private by not sharing or developing my uniqueness over suffering by way of public rejection, corporate theft or, worst, a very low view count (☢).
I’d never been like this before Hwood. H-town gots me down and it gots me good. Every time I tried to develop an idea as a vehicle for my acting some big wig would try and take it, or develop it but not commit to me being the actress, or my ex-manager or producer or people would string me along until the idea or project would die, or beloved white men would leave me out of meetings and emails pertaining the story that I came to them with: My story. Each one of these cases happened and were extremely painful they all felt like miscarriages by the hands of others. Other sillier dramas affecting me: Instagram wouldn’t verify me, Twitter did but when I changed my name to Cherry it removed my verification (both seemed crucial at the time), someone took down my Wikipedia page ㋡Films would audition me to where I was being considered for amazing roles and doing chemistry reads, making it to the top 2, 3 or 4 choices and then it would either go to Latinx socialites, light-eyed whitetinas, gutless backstabbers (can name a few) or Disney stars… not that these people being my competition had been a problem in the past, I’ve beat them before in getting the part BUT, for some reason, it happened one too many times, in a row, too close to achieving my goals, in ALL aspects of my creative career in Hollywood. I was beat down.
Even a cute rose-colored glass can only be sharp for so long under water. I was slowly drowning, I decided I’d lost my sharpness ( ? not that hwood is racist and likes their stars already famous and the art already digestible ?) and I started hoarding my art… maybe I hoarded it as a way to make a pile under me to prop myself up, or maybe to find that, underwater, I could create a whole new world: My own world. A reversed Little Mermaid. I went in and I went dormant and I went dramatic and I self-cancelled. I truly didn’t put together 100% that the rough beat down of the industry had me going into a dormant stage of self protection. I thought I was broken. Hoarding my art was an act of self-protection. I became a beautiful floating tardigrade, in space, floating, alone, self-preserved, forever. But, at the time, I thought I was being dramatic I mean… I have so many friends that have made it big and they don’t seem to have suffered any of these kinda bigger bruises. Have they? Are they suffering? I feel we all do.
Thankfully, a series of revelations before and during the pandemic had me questioning my hoarding. First of all I fully embraced I was traumatized for moving like an artist in an industry that is, first and foremost, an INDUSTRY, that means: it aims to make money honey. This ain’t no artist commune. Uniqueness is great but can it make buck. I switched gears: I’ma do ME.
Second, I thought my loop of artistic suicidal ideation (♡don’t bb♡) was unique to me. That was until one of my BFFs said the same shit about their art. Literally the same “I always hoard my art! I feel like I’ll die and someone will find my apartment and turn it into a gallery and all the art will finally be seen.” I was like 👀👀👀👀 OH OK! So we all on this weird useless fantasy? WOW! MIND-BLOWN! First, I wanted to think I was a bit more unique in my sad, hot, emo feelings but I also was happy to have a friend to bond with about this but also: WHY ARE WE WAITING TO DIE FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO DISPLAY OUR ART!?!? Is this a trend amongst artists? This universal? Does everyone want someone else to pick up their slack? And is it slack or is it that “putting yourself out there” feels like a form of dying-
—Is it that putting yourself out there feels like dying…—
➳♡ Putting yourself out there IS a form of dying!! ➳♡
Ah!
Hoarding is coward and hoarding is brave because not hoarding, aka releasing, means dying. We hoard so we don’t die. There’s a self that exists when we create and another self that is born after the creation is released and the creator dies. There’s a pregnancy period where you’re one with your baby and there’s the baby, outside of you, choosing to be its own individual and then you, the emptied vessel, now changed forever.
Hoarding is brave when it means self preservations, it may protects us (momentarily) from dying in the hands of copycats and big wigs who can develop something faster, with more means and get inspired from us for free. Hoarding protects us from being heartbroken by the fingertips of crusty ole internet trolls. Hoarding is a shield of spikes against the elements but it’s true that, in hoarding things that are meant to be shared, the spikes of the shield are aimed at our own selves. It’s a great, brave, temporary solution. Some art comes from hard parts of us, difficult parts and we need to feel approved of or reacted to a certain way before we put it out. This form of control indicates we are too raw and not ready. This is self care. This is listening to yourself and it means you’re still in the process of creating the piece. You’re not hoarding, you’re gestating. Hoarding is not gestating. Hoard for too long, past the point of self-care, and it will slowly kill you. Hoarding then is more like preventing the baby from coming out, trying to birth an 11 month old baby, putting a pause on nature.
I remember my music boyfriend, James Blake, talking about how he created a sad song that came from a sad thing that happened to him so, when it was time to release the track (from his last album), Friends That Break Your Heart he felt himself mourning the thing all over again and simply feeling very weird promoting it. He didn’t hoard it tho, he was brave. He decided to release it and die that death again and, thanks to that, I have a song that helps me processing the death of my friendships. He shared his bread with the community.
Looking back, I know my musings were less about me physically dying and more representing the lonely death that happens when precious gems that are meant for the enjoyment of the community are kept under the pillow of one individual and one individual alone. Artists are channels, we don’t pick our art, we fine tune ourselves with ideas of matching frequency, we honor them and then, just as they came to us, we must let them go so that others may feel themselves who they are through them. It’s a mission of love and, for art to happen through you, you need to be embodied while dying a million soul deaths. Wow I got intense there but this, my dear lover, is my real truth.
I, for one, have to do only one thing: Continue to feel my way into putting myself out there, it morphs and changes and I am exploring it, I continue to let whomever witness me just witness me. No amount of secret enemies taking down my Wikipedia page or backstabbing me out of a prominent project or trying to tell my whitesplain and mansplain story for me for $$$ can steal or break or even grasp my essence so I feel peace in this for of dying.
♡“Send”♡ “Publish”♡ “Post”♡ “Forward”♡ “Upload” ♡are all forms of death and also of life. Feel free to share this. Thank you for reading and witnessing me.