After thirty years of diligent work, the fash finally found the guy stupid enough to eliminate the NEA. I studied the NEA four as an undergraduate student in my history of photography class, and as a kid growing up in South Florida, the 90s culture war attempting to paint the arts as obscene simmered throughout my childhood and adolescence. Consuming art and making art has been my primary coping mechanism the whole of my life, and now as adult, I am changing many of my coping mechanisms under this round of fascism.

With perfect timing, I am in the midst of building a fine art practice with language as a my medium of choice, and of course, I’m also trying to go back to school (again). If it isn’t obvious to you, I’m allergic to doing anything the “easy” way, but more once of my coping tools is responding to that which is happening around me —-not reacting, mind you, but responding to.

Response requires preparation, consideration, and planning.

I am being held captive in a debtors and death colony, so perhaps you could call this my reinvention era. I’m responding to the conditions I am currently living under and for better or worse, humans respond to the conditions that structure our material realities.

Last go ‘round with fascism, I decided I was bone tired of “it all” and smoked myself into a stupor, but being permastoned only temporarily changed my reality and it didn’t change anything so much as it numbed me to being overstimulated, overworked, chronically stressed out and constantly under emotional siege in every single aspect of my life.

I see lots of folks around me succumbing in similar ways, indulging in their stupor of choice and I’m both disappointed and sympathetic to the tools of coping while living under the end of empire. Mostly though, I recognize with diamond clarity that folks is gonna do what the fuck they gonna do — that’s between them and their conscience (or lack thereof).

As I am writing this, I’m currently downing some applesauce as an after dinner treat because I’ve gotten enough health warnings over the last half decade of life to know one of my coping tools is emotional eating. I come from a family with a history of disordered eating, like so many of us do.

I sometimes lean on substances to alter my consciousness much the same way I relied on maladaptive daydreaming to escape my reality as a child. I’ve had to work really fucking hard to become embodied, to inhabit my body, instead of trying to find ways to escape my corporal form. As I’ve become more embodied, I’ve discovered how much I enjoy being in my body and not out of my body. When I am dissocated, when I am feeling disconnected from my flesh, I know something is very wrong with my current reality that needs to be changed immediately. Further, when I am feeling deeply connected to my flesh, I know that I am in alignment and that what makes up my daily reality is only that which seeks to nourish me and keep me safe.

Embodiment has meant sitting with the shit that makes me uncomfortable and the feelings that are complex and will take time and patience to parse through. It means expression—no censoring yself, no swallowing my feelings, no constant worry about pleasing others or fawning to settle my body nor my conflicts.

It means saying fuck that nigga!!! (gender neutral and various niggas, but I digress) with my entire chest and in actual practice. I’m talking about praxis, here, so catch up! How I’m coping with captivity now looks like: stretching, dancing, walking across my neighborhood and admiring the spring blooms and catcalling the pups I meet on my walks. I sing out loud, I journal regularly, I talk openly with loved ones. I take my meds. I don’t think I’m above learning, but I don’t entertain the euphoric recall of those in various seasons of denial, either.

And lately, I make. I make so much, so often. Paper, ceramics. I play with my voice. I just filmed my first micro-documentary. I’m learning how to edit video. I’m learning how to engingeer sound. I make art because it is my duty, but because, I cope now through expressing myself instead of being flattened by depression (also meds. honestly, thank god for the right medication and the right dosage of that medication).

Equally, I get really fucking angry and I howl and I rant and then I pit fire ceramics so I can burn things and I build war altars and I adorn my body as an altar and pretend I am a warrior and my weapons are my hands, my mouth, my mind. I document how I look when I am burning with righteous rage. I don’t lash out and I don’t swallow my rage. I don’t get annoyed and try to displace and deny my anger when I feel it. It is there, it is necessary, it fuels me and it doesn’t have to be harmful to anyone, including me.

I’m finding power in being preemptive, on reading the patterns, on believing the first time and not the 1000th time. And I make things with my head and my hands and my body. I prioritize my pleasure in all ways, I seek out the sensual and the erotic and remember I am soft and tender and human. I don’t let shame rot my connection to my flesh or my heart.

Claybody responds to me being embodied, connected. It talks through my fingertips and my star stuff, and we collaborate. My brushes and ink and spray paint transmute the alchemy of language I am working with as I send missives of hope, messages of warnings, and glimpses of rage out of my body and into the world. I used to cope by making my mind and my body a site of torture and punishment, of unmet needs and voracious, stifled wants.

Now, everyone who wishes to percieve me is met with my nuance, my power. And when it all gets to be too much, which is often, I look to my body to guide my release and it asks me to give it a clear, strong voice, so I do.

This is how I’m surviving fascism. What about you?

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Some important housekeeping notes: I am currently in a cycle of moving through digital spaces under new aliases. This has long been a part of my digi sec practices, but this is also part of a necessary refresh as I segue into something new and vital and life giving, for me. That being said, things you ought to know interacting with me moving forward:

1. Yes, this is exactly who you think it is. That’s all I’m gonna say right now.

2. I will be bringing subscriptions back beginning July 6th, 2025. Monthly subscriptions are $5 dollars a month or $50 for the entire year. Now, is a good time to unsubscribe if it’s not in your budget to follow me. If you are a friend (someone I speak to on a fairly regular basis) of mine, I am so happy to comp you a subscription. Otherwise, your account will be charged a month from now.

3. After this post, I will not be posting publicly anymore, hence the subscription coming back to paywall off my posts. I’m not sure if my visiting instructor position will survive this summer as my course falls firmly in the DEIA space so I’m waiting to any day now be told my course is being dropped. These subscriptions will get me through the summer months when I’m furloughed from my part-time job. Further, if you really wanna be in my business, you’ll have to pay. Seems like a fair exchange to me.

4. I’ve unpublished a few posts that will come back paywalled in July, if there is something I’ve written that you want to return to, you’ll have to subscribe in order to make that happen.

5. Thanks for joining me on this ride in all my iterations. I am always glad to have you here and so thankful for those of you who’ve been rocking with me since day one.