09/19/2026

You can lead a horse to lemons, but you can’t make it drink lemonade. Or something like that.

I typed the above sentences onto this page a few nights ago. I’m not sure what I meant, exactly, but that doesn’t matter. Or at least, I’m trying not to make it matter.

Cuz the only thing that matters in art is how we feel about it. This is a principle that’s taken me a while to embrace. In my previous life, I was a news reporter, and I largely tailored my writing toward the aim of communicating facts clearly and unambiguously. However, these past few years — two years, four years, eight? — my mind has grown considerably squishier. I find myself more open to the experiences of the world outside, letting each moment impress upon me, rather than attempting to impress my own analysis upon the world.

But it’s scary to put myself out there in this way. I’ve got about ten years worth of news articles out there with my name on them. But putting my name on a creative work, for the whole world to see, involves a level of courage I don’t normally embody. To become emotionally intimate with an unseen person, perhaps multiple unseen persons, and to allow them judge the most sensitive corners of my heart — it’s a very scary thing, to me.

To be an artist is to declare that your view of things, and the way you express that view — no matter how odd, imperfect, unruly or even dangerous — deserves to be seen, to be chosen, to be bitten, chewed, swallowed and digested. And sure, lots of people will end up just spitting it back out. But there’s a chance that someone out there will actually think it’s good.

Here’s to those theoretical someones. And to myself, I guess.