real beauty takes no prisoners.
real beauty is not clean or orderly or lovely but instead shocking and destructive and challenging and crippling and confronting and disruptive and profound and interesting and uncomfortable and dynamic and mysterious and unraveling and unapologetic and raw and misunderstood and intentional and emotional and spiritual and simple and complex and made without barriers and without restrictions and without tethering because to do those things would be to eliminate its reason to be.
if clear is kind, then obsession is perfect.
think about it. the world’s greatest in everything never understood what it meant to sit back and let everyone else do what they wanted to do. they were ruthless and savage and vicious. this doesn’t mean you have to be a horrible person to win. obsession is madness and dedication for the people who want it. lack of obsession makes you boring and beatable.
who should you write for?
i work in brand and advertising and copy and whatever else fall into those folds. i write fiction to feed my soul and bare the bones of my heart. why does my heart have bones? i’m not sure, but it makes sense. telling you this because it took me way too long to realize my inner entrepreneur and inner artist were at war for expression and happiness. currently trying to figure out where that lives. where fulfillment lives. because it’s not in writing for others. if my writing of expression and art and thinking beyond the commercial could feed me forever, nothing could defeat me, and my internal enemies would no longer have the ammunition they have used to destroy me. and so i must write for me, because she has waited forever with no turnout. perhaps you should do the same, but only if you see yourself reflected in this. or not. i’m not your boss
no one remembers how to scroll anymore.
everyone on substack complains about seeing people they don’t like in their feed. you have no idea how lucky you are to be free and surrounded by other free minds. there are people who will never have the opportunity to write in a forum exposed to other free thinkers. pull your head out of your ass and take stock. you’re fucking lucky and your lack of gratitude and your inability to read the room will forever make you unreadable and uninteresting. learn how to scroll and build a world for others. your neighbors have the same privilege.
moral grandstanding is killing art.
artists and their art should always be separated. it’s vital and important to be able to acknowledge masterful works by their formation and intention without bringing the person into it. the people who obsess over this are more interested in being morally superior than they are in creating anything interesting.
please, just once, stop planning your writing and see what it does to your work.
writing these daily thoughtstreams (stream of consciousness) pieces has been freeing. I feel connected to every word. no overthinking or planning. it needs polish. but right now we’re not in the stage of polishing. we’re in the stage of reconnecting and exploration and defining what the voice is and what it always was, now without the shining cuffs to keep them imprisoned.
you’re not a fucking trend.
in case you forgot.
— Taylor Barnes.