For the love of the game
Surprise y’all, dropping a blog post with no rollout like I’m Beyonce. This has a point, I promise (maybe).
It’s been over a year since you heard from me, and there are some good reasons for that. I had this whole rollout plan for my next big launch of a project I started working on at the backend of 2024, and since birthdays mean a lot to me, I was gonna drop it on my book’s 2nd birthday (2 is my number after all). 9 days before that, my brother suffered a traumatic brain injury during a motorbike accident. It has upended my entire life. There’s so much I want to say about the actual accident, but out of respect for my brother’s privacy, I’ll say that there is no scientific reason why he should have survived, and yet he has, making a miraculous recovery. We have successfully helped him re-learn to walk, talk, eat, and are recovering his memory a little bit more each day.
My brother is teaching me every day about fortitude. I’ve been thinking a lot about fortitude, and this concept I’ve been playing with the past 3 years of pushing just beyond what I believe my bounds are. If you had asked me 3 months ago, I would have assessed myself as more cowardly than I am right now. What I’ve come to know now is the wisdom of present me knows past me was setting up the foundation for future me — to stand on my square now (this ain’t AI btw, real poets own the emdash thank you!) Past me had to be a little more timid to survive the fallout, and she’s strong for knowing that. Ain’t time funny and humbling like that? Time has been real funny these past days, which is also why you haven’t heard from me. Me and time are tussling right now. I always feel like I have more than I do, while having no time at all. Which means I have to make time . . . so this is why we’re here.
Anyways, I’m gonna rewatch The Last Dance because I think it’s one of the greatest documentaries ever created. I miss watching players like Jordan or Kobe. You could just tell how much they loved it through the fluidity of it all. A true love for the game. I’m trying to reignite that with this blog post. I think a lot about how I believe perfection will save me, but it never does. It’s usually the practice that does. What Kobe say? The only way you get better is by pushing yourself past exhaustion. The practice teaches me something more than winning the game ever will. It is the fortitude to repeat, again and again, until excellence becomes you. Until your soul is inextricable from it. Until it is like walking. My brother re-learned how to walk, y’all. In 3 months. Can I say that again?
The first time he actually used a toilet after the accident, we had to harness him in a sling. I remember seeing the sweat beads on his brow, the confusion in his eyes, the desire to just be done, and still he pushed past the point of his own exhaustion. Truly, reached out of body to something bigger to commit to, “Yes, I will walk again. I don’t know how. I don’t know when, but I will practice even when I hate it.”
So I think I’m gonna release this random ass blog post unedited and imperfect because I have to practice. Practice without control, but with a whole lot of fortitude to welcome whatever the practice intends to teach me. To accept the parts I’m not yet good at, and let others see the process of the acceptance, and the elation that follows after the integration. I will see clearer when I reach beyond my own exhaustion because I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but there is something I’m grasping towards beyond my present understanding. Something is calling me. Something I must answer to. I’m committed to it.
Speaking of seeing my imperfect shit, I have a confession. I’ve never finished the artist way, and I never will lmao. RELEASE ME FROM THE PERFORMANCE OF THE ARTIST WAY!! Me and my agent talked about this concept I’m working through that I’m dubbing “the purification of the artist” (artist ego death if you will) and basically I believe there’s a critical integration of the shadow self that must happen to reach God-level creative expression, when you do it well you get a Tyler the Creator, and when you don’t . . . you get a Kanye. I will not explain further until I drop my YouTube channel, but the right people will pick up what I’m putting down.
So, my purification is starting right now, because I said so. Welcome to the show! Sometimes I don’t feel like a poet, but then sometimes I’m like, “they’re gonna read my shit even when all the books are banned.” I oscillate inside my God Complex regularly. This is how I know I’m ready to practice again. I can’t promise this is the beginning of dropping regular content. I don’t think this is the beginning of anything. Quite frankly, I am tired of beginning. I am ready to just be. So, here’s a post to say I’m here. I’m alive. The poet in me is alive. MY BROTHER IS ALIVE, despite all odds.
And we all have something to say.
