Earlier today in the back of the car I started to tear up because the driver was singing along to Lady Gaga’s song “Shallow” so out of tune, but with so much gusto it didn’t matter. Or rather: it was the only thing that mattered. It moved me so much. how someone can feel something and write it down and someone else all the way across the world can say, “hey I felt that too.”

How can we be strangers when we feel the same pain?

My sister gave birth to my first nibbling and I held that precious baby in my arms and I cried because I was once that and we all were and someone heeded our cry and sang to us, out of tune and we looked back with so much wonder, like the world continually stretched beyond our wildest imagination. Because it did (and it still does.) So I remember that all the scary men on the street and the comment sections, they were once babies too. And i wonder what made them lose their wonder.

I’m an artist which means I want to do my part to make the world wonderful again. I want to live out of tune. I want to say and be and do the “wrong” things because they are wonderful. I want to live in many places in many genders in many feelings because they are all so wonderful. I want to say I am both the happiest and the saddest I have ever been. Sometimes I love so hard it hurts and sometimes it hurts so hard to continue to love.

It hurts that we call each other strangers even though we feel the same pain. It hurts that lovers can become strangers (even though we feel the same pain). It hurts when the audiences say to me “as a white / cis person I resonate with your work” as if we are only supposed to have affinity with the people who look like us, not the people who feel like us.

I make art for everyone. because everyone is hurting. Because someone sang to me and i learned that the heart is the most honest instrument because it is always out of tune.

I Want to Live Out Of Tune