If you don't wanna read above you can ^listen to it here^
acrobat bit dance taking too long for me to write down my deep deep adult like time shining sorrows
Yearnings, longings, desires and sorrows
Dolores walking down runways against parallel apocalyptic desires
Touch the fire that burns your races liars
open carry ,
open carry infront of the White House
carry it all over your shoulder then move forward
Futuristic drama set against backdrop serendeptity pink flowers
Surrender epity
Pink flowers.
Yes
Purple, blue pink magenta red.
Lips of a holy liar red,
seduced into the bed mattress of another ethereal ghoul mistress
In my dreams alluding the reality of death and sleep
Wrapped in an American flag as I hump fraudulent imaginary dreams
I need more peace
Give me back my dreams
Keep it in me
Keep it in these
Highs
And lows.
Baby girls in drag showing a endless history of executive dads
Presidential fathers will not stop Lucent homo martyrs
TO FEEL ALIVE
INSIDE
What does this mean when the clock strikes past nine?
First caught in the grams lustful tension between the grip of myself
The grip of myself inside
Social medias harnessing. how scary adult youth is
Cannot take any more flashy pics for my virgin lips
Insta pics instant tits blue cell phone screen to the laptop dopamemes take it off for me gimme another token ill give you what you need feed my needs tell me what is it you’re keeping from me?
If only it all could feel like this
Pink flowers sundress sunset dwindling twilight kiss upon my fat brown lips floating down into my modestly luxurious mattress until the last whisp Er.
Whipser in my ear and I will know you were here I swear
I swear I cannot bear anymore quiet messages under woken sleep that someone else was taken by mother deaths heavenly far cry weep.
All
To all Those beautiful , glamorous , unique, wholesome , hot , damned souls.
Dec 17
Hi ---,
I am on the N train hovering above the east river on the Manhattan bridge. I have been staring at a computer screen all day making work for our --- tomorrow. For about a week straight I’ve been adamant in making work for --- tomorrow and I’m excited to show it. I am exhausted and tired but proud to have been able to feel complete by the end of the day. When I looked onto the city from this train window I felt like the city was mine. It all just felt too significant to not share, with my headphones in and my eyes glued to the night lights I felt that it was only mine to keep. The past couple of days I’ve been so busy making the work and printing it I was not able to arrange organize it. I hope this will be alright tomorrow.
I have social problems, that is the thought that just surfaced in my mind now. However I’m very thankful for the people in my life despite my uncertainty in place. Our --- is special.
I hope I do not die young.
Feb 3
Hi ---,
she spoke about how any crime or aggression against blackness is a crime against queerness, a crime against women, against homosexuality, against people, against the pieces of identity which make up being human. That these things are not all separate from one another and in fact closely related. And internally I guess I was thinking of the places I feel in my chest where my blackness and my queerness are holding each other with this sense of sweet romance and where I feel they are separate from one another. Because they can't either always be the same thing or a separate thing. Where do they feel together and where they don't.
I teared up during one video because everything seemed so violent. Everyone is afraid. Everyone is angry. the police have fear in their eyes too you can see it. I'm afraid to know what the consequences of fear maybe for a militarized police force. what will they do when they feel backed up into a corner? with their rifles, trucks, gas, armor and government backing. These videos show the true face of this cities bubbling political climate and how racially charged it is, how much it has to do with class, with color, with people, with police. Why does it seem so easy for people to believe racism or classism cant exist in 2020? when did this happen where we were taught to believe all of this was left behind, that it cannot, does not exist any longer? I cried for the young man being arrested on the screen because I saw how afraid the police of my home feel when the color of my people voice themselves with anger. with only their word and their body as their weapon, when the opposing force has weapons of m16's, ar-15's, batons, body armor, the numbers of an army, and the technology designed to harm me.
I don't want to be auctioned. I don't want to be a conversation piece. And although I may do the work to make this impossible for people to touch my body of work like this it may be inevitable...
April 15th
Hi Hunter,
...
To our moments of happiness, to the train going over Manhattan bridge,
To our survival
To going back
Hunter, don’t die young.
I will not forgive the world.
Urban Frustration, No salvation
Beat my face to a bloody pulp for all my internalized insults
Fuck your fake ass for levitating without me
Skinny dip into a cesspool of smooth groovy boo hoo’s
Rotting in the earth's rotation, pass the j, left is law dont skip me on that rotation
Diss my call and blame it on all the high fashion , chasin bags and sex thrashin after you owe me 25$ cashin debt,
Dont take this as a threat but I’d like to see you beg
Fuck an invoice I want this boy
Toys (dash) tags
In my bag over some lost cash and an empty holler back!
Take one tab and see the planets math, mad i got stains on this shirt and that I hope to see people I love in hurt
Face to the dirt i deserve nothing worse, skirt skirt on blown out backs, ebony invert
Disperse this unfair curse to the familiar dirt curb
Lady look at me, I wont steal your purse if you look into me earnestly.
September 15th
Hello ---!
I wanted to reach out to you because I have questions regarding photography and the role I play in it from the perspective and understanding of a brown boy. Of course, I am more than what these words describe me as but I think since I began taking photography seriously in high school I've had challenging questions about my place in the photo world and how much of my work is genuine expression and revelation and how much of it may sometimes be my conditioned "boyness." In high school, I remember feeling like reaching out to my photo teacher about how to appropriately regulate and grasp my male bias but ultimately, deeming this to be foolish or maybe even something to get me into some kind of trouble. I am not sure how to fully articulate myself in regard to these questions and wonderings but I will try to as best I can despite my slight embarrassment. I feel this is an appropriate time to be asking these questions because it's more than relevant in the current era we live in. But, more importantly, and even more helpful because you are a professor who seems well-read in text regarding gender, sexuality, race, and existentialism in conversation with art and the larger scale of how these aspects of identity are represented in culture(s).
December 1st
Hiii ----,
Who are these people I am photographing and how does their upbringing geographically affect that singular moment I snap a photo of them? What does it do to their eyes as they look into a camera? Will their social class be visible in any of these photos? Growing up in this generation I knew a lot of people without ever really know them. Without ever speaking to them or even seeing them with my eyes. Only seeing pictures of them on Facebook and later on through Instagram. Having Facebook at thirteen the children in my community would mindlessly congregate and reach out to as many other kids as possible. Without any reason, we all wanted to be around as many people as possible and our stomping ground was the still developing, still battered, Battery Park City in TriBeCa. Facebook was the catalyst for communication. I knew rich kids, poor kids, black kids, wealthy white kids, wealthy black kids, Spanish kids (rare), kids addicted to drugs, mentally ill kids, dangerous kids, Asian kids, kids without any race because the culture in their blood was overswept by American culture, Jewish kids, angry kids, depressed kids, destructive kids, many kids whose fathers died, a lot of different types of kids. There is a large community to think about in relation to this project but, should I focus on anything for this project? Could I photograph one of the pretty wealthy white girls I know, put it into this project and have it make sense? Could I photograph a friend of mine who is a struggling rap artist, drug dealer, and deeply angered soul and have it make sense? Are these even the right ways to think about and describe these people? Is this question too weird to ask? One thing is for sure I have a handful of people who I know I wanna photograph because I personally love their eccentric being. I guess I am wondering how far does this community stretch besides this handful? How mich reason do I need to photograph someone.
October 9th
Hi Hunter,
there is nothing sacred about the history of photography, and there is nothing sacred about technology or the future either. All you got to do is sincerely think about what it means to allow your experiments let you grow and complicate your being.
February 6th
Hello ----,
A good friend of mine invited me to have some work up at an event the company he works for hosts. Initially agreeing to this back in December in the moment, it was far enough to say yes to and put it in the back of my mind for a while. By the time Thursday rolled around and I knew I needed to pack that night I hardly had any good feeling within me to be excited for this. I knew I didn't belong here... I had friends coming with me but I think I was afraid of feeling alone. In this state, in this hotel, in this event, vulnerable with the face of my voice on the wall of a room full of middle-aged white people dressed in 1920's costumes, liquor in their hands, drugs of all kinds, wealth to their teeth
4 AM pool parties, an array of psychedelics, All night EDM music, Posters promoting consent, people dressed in animal costumes, 1920's outfits, sweaty cuddle puddles, and outdated neo-hippies; this place, these people were strange, I was not in my environment and could not partake. At each point, before puking into the trash I considered all this and more with an unrelenting realization of where I was, who I was, who I was surrounded by and how this led me to this moment here at 1:29 AM. Each truth hit me in my mind, and in response, my body refused it and regurgitated it out of my body. "my work is hung up on a wall in a shitty hotel in PA." Vomit. "My little negro is hung in a room with intoxicated white neo-hippies dressed in 1920's attire regarding a time in America my pigment would be beaten to dirt constantly.
lowkey crushin' on half empty romances
and valued dreams after deep sleeps
loving the times you saw me peak
retract and repeat to peak
hopelessly fall in love with yourself as you see yourself in others
Q/A
What’s the meaning of life in your eyes?
To me, the meaning of life is to create meaning with your life. There was a short time in my life where I contemplated if meaning is inherently part of existence or if meaning is an idea simply deficit in the universe. And at this point I think, Both. I don't think meaning exists outside of the mind of life. outside of the conscious decision. Nothing happens on purpose or without purpose, it just happens. The universe snapped into existence in an explosive instant because it just did. Things exist within circumstantial odds that are too improbable to understand. However, that's what I find so beautiful about this. That despite the random order of chaos in the life, in existence, in the universe, how quite empty, vast and mostly how indifferent, the observable universe is I can still walk by the water with music in my hear and feel the sun beating down on my body and feel like my life is abundant with purpose. There is order in chaos.
Where would you like to travel?
All I really know and understand culture-wise is being a black American in New York City. Which frankly, has granted me a honest outlook on the nature of life and of people, a perspective I am ultimately thankful for but one that I wish to supersede. In highschool, I sued to sit in class and travel the world in google maps on the school computers feeling such a visceral sense of yearning in my chest. And sometimes I still feel this... I know I need to see the world because this city is not enough for me, for my health, my mind. I'd love to see the surfs and ridges in Ireland. Road trip from California through Death Valley to Las Vegas. Live in Alaska for a while. Search for my grandfather's legacy in Columbia. Feel the beaches in Thailand. Taste the food of Vietnam. Witness the art world in Berlin. Find solidarity and romance in Peru. Find faith in nature in several African countries. And replenish my love and character in Greece.
What’s your idea of happiness?
Happiness. I don't know I am still figuring it out. And honestly, I don't think ill ever have it figured out. Asked me two or four years ago I may say living comfortably and modestly as an artist who is able to make work for themselves gets hired for commissions and can survive like this. But as I draw myself closer to that happiness I am feeling more and more that maybe I want something more. Generally, making artwork makes me happy and it always will. Although making art sometimes makes me feel crazy so, art and I argue sometimes but we always find ourselves back in love. My family makes me happy and warm. I am thankful for the endless amounts of love I get from them. The company and insight of my friends make me happy. Physical love and desire make me happy. I think as long as I can maintain my core foundations of happiness through all my life then I will always remain a happy human.
What’s the thing you most like\appriciate about yourself?
This is always difficult to answer because with most superpowers there comes a lot of responsibility and danger. Although I feel a good and easy one I would definitely make use of is teleportation. there are so many places I would teleport to right now... My favorite comic book character is Dr. Manhattan. Who is basically a science person who got killed accidentally in an atomic mishap. And over time he put himself back together cell by cell and become this 4th-dimensional being who perceives time presently, forwardly and backward. He can also see things as they are exactly, taking any structure and shifting it in all its parts and put it back together. He can be in two places at once and teleport and has an acute knowledge on the nature of the universe. however, the only downside is that his connection to humanity and desire for human connection is indifferent and he doesn't really care for it. Which is something I dont know I could trade?
Do you have any life questions that reoccur in your mind and you yet to answer?
I could come up with an endless amount of questions for this. What is consciousness? Have aliens visited us? But something I've noticed when I go over my journal entries from at least 4 years ago til now is that I often find myself speaking to this invisible force. Asking questions of it and referring to it as, "you." "I see you here in this moment... I need you here... you were there when I saw you and you've slipped away... what do I need from you?... do you need from me?" Yet, despite all my internal conversations, I don't have any newer insight as to who this "you" is. So my question ultimately is, who are you?