Free Write/Free Rant

What even is the internet + Little Mermaid + power

What the hell are we all doing on the internet, man?

Like what even IS THIS beautiful, toxic, wild, connective, violent dumpster fire of a Wild West?

NO BODY KNOWS. I repeat, NO BODY KNOWS. Not the experts. Not the scientists Not the influencers. Not the billionaires profiting from the commodification of our attention. Not the armchair experts, or the spiritual teachers. Not even the conspiracy theorists, tho Lord knows I get a kick out of listening to them.

All we really know for CERTAIN?

Is that NONE OF US CAN LOOK AWAY.

As ever, we are human beings; proud of ourselves for making it, yet standing way too close to the fire.

Did I say stand? I meant we hold the fire in our palms. We gaze down, down, down equally horrified and entranced by the power before us. And even tho it’s right in our hands now, we still feel more powerless than ever.

So what do we do?

We play. We experiment. We create. We theorize. We fight. We blame. We buy. We sell. We try to find some holy prophet who has the answers. We love that prophet for a time before their inevitable crucifixtion.

I know it sounds like I am, but I’m not even trying to figure it out anymore. I’m so done trying to figure it out. I’m riding waves now instead of analyzing them.

I will say tho- I was pretty good at the internet for awhile. I used to have an instinctive way of slicing my life into impactful, evocative, digestible pieces.

They called me authentic. They called me real. They called me brave. But any of us who kinda believe we managed to be those things a time or two, know very well that if you keep *trying* to be THE THING you inevitably become a performance of that thing.

The internet is a place for those best at performing authenticity.

That’s why I love the line in Cameron Winter’s song, Drinking age. “Everything is lyyyyyingggggg.”

And yet. Here’s me. Same ole desire I ever. I want to make people feel the way great art makes me feel; Honest. Beautiful. Human. Free.

It took me a long time to know what I was about. To really know. I think I always kind of knew in the primal, non verbal, ball of energy hurling forward with its karmic inertia sort of way. I sometimes think what I made had more power then– when I was blind and lead by my subconscious.

But something happens when you create and let it be seen. Something happens when you utter any kind of “I AM,” hands trembling, voice shaking.

This world comes at you. Huge invisible hands hell bent on programming disbelief. Sick systems, wounded parents, the safety you never got, the contract of fear + conformity anybody who’s selling something whether it’s religion or a house is trying to get you to sign.

The contract reads:

I agree to not be myself.

In return you are promised - not in writing exactly, it’s just heavily implied:

Belonging

Acceptance

Safety

Security

Love

And even though almost all of us have seen the little mermaid (IT WON’T COST MUCH, JUST YOUR VOICE) or have heard the same story told a million different ways,

We still find ourselves in a desperate moment, willing to make the trade.

So anyway, I thought I knew what I was about. I thought I’d outsmart the world with my will. I thought creator-ship and expression would be easy. In a lot of ways they were.

For awhile.

But the world kept coming. Kept moving toward me with its scalpels and shaping tools. It found my insecurities, the ones I’d tried to bury, and pulled them up and into the light.

Are you sure you know who you are?

Are you sure you’re walking in that knowing?

And even though these inquiries burned and hurt me. I learned to let the pain serve me too. False identity after false identity melted away. Death and rebirth cycled on repeat. Some I chose, some that chose me.

I wasn’t out to proove anything, only to breathe as my essence, only to laugh and cry as my truth.

I learned that to lie was to feel less alive.I learned the cost of shrinking was clarity. I felt how each and every effort to please lessened the strength in my stride and the light in my eyes.

They go so fast.

Yet to be humbled is to be empowered if you let the rock bottoms do their proper work on you.

When I say I remembered who I am, I mean that I remembered I’m nobody. And the power that gives to me to be with everything is difficult to explain.

I have looked long and hard at the world. Its beauty. Its promise. Its suffering. I’ve asked it my part.

The world said, “Don’t save me. Love me.”

The world said “I am you.”

The world told me love was action.

Love was embrace, embodiment. Love was mess and staying with the mess.

My path turns out to be the same as it ever was; the path of the soul remembering itself. I am of most service when I bring every strand of my strange humanity to this remembering. When I weave those strands and dance with them and let you see them as an offering of beauty.

I’ve offered with words.

I’ve offered with photographs.

I’ve offered with classes.

I’ve offered with listening.

I won’t stop offering.

This is the kind of artist I am.

“I came to sing the song.”

With or without the internet (Have you seen what’s going on in Iran?)

As I write this, my daughter, Wren- 17, almost 18 now- plays the piano and sings at the top of her lungs. She won’t let me record.

I couldn’t be more proud,

Yan

P.S. You have less than 36 hours to register for the last time I EVER teach TEETHKISS the class. ITS ALL ABOUT YOU AND YOUR VOICE.

We got room for just ONE more Fab Four seat.

We got room for a few more live seats.

Silent seats are also available because they have no cap AND they are the best bang for your buck.

READ MORE ABOUT TEETHKISS THE CLASS HERE