I feel like its been forever since I last sat down and got to exhale with words like this. As normal I have continued my journey of self discovery and I am in a very happy spot with myself.
Earlier this year I had come to a realization about how lost I had felt with my life. I felt like I had no direction and that I was at the behest of the environment around me and all I could do was do my best to respond appropriately. At the worst of this realization I signed up for therapy through my college, my excuse was that I wanted it to specifically help me find purpose with my college education so that my debt wasn’t for nothing.
Unknowingly, my life had pushed me toward something that aligned with me perfectly with conveniently placed events in my life to push me down this direction. I was blind to recognizing what I had always wanted because I taught myself to forget. My need for artistic expression and want to care for others. [Read ‘I think I Found Myself Again‘ and ‘I asked for change to come and I got it‘ for a full picture and story]
Something that feels so obvious in hindsight was an impossibility to conceive in the moment. But I went forward with this path. This expression was like an overgrown forest that hadn’t been tended to in years. Trying to express it all at once lead me to 2 kinds of expressions that could be seen through my music and paintings/sketches.
My music is very dark, its atmosphere and some of its lyrical content and my paintings are abstract, both capture an emotional still of my being at the point in time that they’re made. But they also help me understand myself.
I feel for my entire life there has always been something missing from me that I’ve had to search for and connect to. Whether it be my literal missing father or the cultural disconnections that are felt between me and the older generations of my family. My existence is surrounded by loss. But my journey of self acceptance and expression has connected me to me.
To be an artist almost feels like it is a family trait that skipped a generation and landed in to me. I look at my cousins who are each accomplished in their own right. My aunt who even married a man with fame. I wondered how different my life could’ve been if I got to follow my first dream and go to art school like they did. But I don’t feel that is my purpose.
I am a Haitian-American. Something that the United States has seethed against, not just because of my blackness but because of what Haiti represents. Although in a destitute state now, a scream of freedom still echoes through all of its descendants.
The American suburb is where culture and identity go to die.
The chaotic messy symphony surrounding my birth almost ensured I would not get to experience what Haitian culture was. With all my experiences of it feeling like I was in the echoes of places stuck in time. I grew more disconnected to it as I grew, becoming a plain American. I thought it was funny, I didn’t know my father and what culture I knew of was fading. I thought it was incredibly American to not know your history so I fit the definition perfectly. But living the story that was handed to me required that I lie to myself.
I’m proud of my family heritage and to be a Black American specifically.
I talked with my uncle a while ago about our annoyance with social and cultural assimilation. We’re both individuals that don’t fit the mold perfectly and have been through the cycle of masking to fit a social group or lifestyle that rejects us. And he was talking about how not teaching the language of creole was the act that he felt was a killing blow to what our inherent culture would be.
Being stranded in the suburbs your house unknowingly becomes your prison. What ever method of culture that were able to be sustained prior has to be carved out and maintained with purpose, focus, intention, and time. All things that you slowly lose while here.
I never planned on trying to reconnect with what my Haitian heritage could be. But as I healed over these years its become something that is impossible to ignore.
Lately as I’ve made music I took the turn to only speak in creole. It felt like my body forced it out of me. Only in bits and pieces could I articulate thoughts, my mouth rejected english in these moments. The unknown had found its voice.
With this my work has continued. My new episode of Life Through Lenses that is in the works holds special value with me. My art has taken on a new purpose behind its strokes. I am excited for my future.
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