What can I tell you that you do not already know?
I am a werewolf.
Of course, I am not a werewolf.
I am an artist.
Of course, I am not an artist.
I went to a lecture and they told the art students that we are, what was the term? Cultural workers?
We work to create and shepard culture. It feels strange to consider myself in relation with society.
I come from a poor southern family, my parents are very skilled in music and art and labor. To describe the breadth of crafting and music and work that I grew up around is a biography unto itself.
I am eight generations descended from the founder of Nashville, who was a French-Canadian fur trader and lived in a cave by the Cumberland river. But I have nothing to show for it outside of
grief, traditions, and stories of land lost to time and stupidity. Blood of mine is spread throughout northern Tennessee. Nameless, faceless, oceans of people I've never met but know exist.
How do I take this culture forward? How do I shape the world around me when I am severed from family, severed from nations of people around me? I open my fanged mouth to speak, and close it, afraid.
I met a northerner, a midwesterner, when I was sixteen. He had goals that stretched to the stars, and I moved to Toronto with him when I turned twenty. The woods here are foreign to me, though the flora and fauna
are familiar. Everything is alien to him, for the midwest plains were razed and replaced with endless corn fields.
There is an irony to the fact that my ancestor was Canadian, and I find myself the last of my immediate family, back in Canada. Perhaps not irony, rather, the satisfaction of a circle complete.
The truth about me, and my actions in the world, is rather simple. I am of a generation that is uncertain of the future due to climate change, microplastics, and economic insecurity. Many people in my generation
are alienated from the family, and alienated from community. If I let the troubles of my life, and the troubles of the world get to me too much, I would perish. I do what I can to bring joy, light, and
entertainment to those around me.
This website is perhaps, at this time, scattered in purpose. I wish to entertain, by bringing back my favorite parts of the net. I also wish to create a digital portfolio of my work so that I can make a
business card and say, look, I am very talented.