Stop looking for the answer. It will find you. 

You don’t know anything as long as you think you know something. You know fragments and subtle judgements surrounding a world you constructed; a world that unfolded your understanding, sprawled outwards like a scroll that you believe is infinite. An incorrect belief as long as you believe it.

“It’ll take some time, but somewhere down the line we won’t be alone.”

— Car Seat Headrest’s “My Boy.”

Inside, you’re searching, pleading for something to reveal itself; clawing within yourself for an image that rests only on gentle eyelids. Sometimes we believe that we have to wait as long as we are physically and mentally able for a truth or peace to show its face. Not knowing that it’s waiting for us. 

Music is a footstep, or rather several footsteps tap-dancing around our souls, accompanying our every thought and gesture. It is what carries me, holding me for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. I’m sure this is a relatable sentiment. However, this sentiment can equally carry me from pain to pleasure as well as from pleasure to pain. Music is powerful.

“Oh, it’s dark. The sun went down, the power’s still out. Oh, it’s cold. My blood barely flows.”

— The Microphones’ “My Warm Blood.”

A melancholic chord assisted with a painful statement is all it takes to plunge an already broken spirit, yet we deny the spirit’s existence. Perhaps it is a type of sickness to be so easily affected by something so simple. But is it simple? Or is it truth? Escaping the lungs of the preacher and vibrations of an instrument, colliding to portray an image of something that already existed, but until its conception, knew no form.

Creativity is both a process of hunting and gathering. Deny either’s place in the process and you thus deny human nature. Some days it is a game of fishing through a vast pond, seeing what you find. Other days, it’s a fierce storming of mental gates, purging and collecting whatever can be scrapped together in order to prove one’s ability to create. The gathering is a gentleness, healing for the soul. The hunting is a ferocity, and while harsh, has equal opportunity to cleanse the spirit of its ills. 

“I’m seeing illusions in the pockets of my brain. I use it, then find a way to illustrate my pain. Confusion, ‘cause you don’t understand a word I’m saying. Forgive me for all I done ‘cause I be barely praying.”

— Denzel Curry’s “The Ills”

I am not a preacher. I’m barely a musician and I’m certainly no spiritual seer. I am simply an observer of patterns within myself. That is all I have the authority to talk of, really, and even then my grasp of myself is tenuous at best. But my experience with music and art has been a journey that can never be detached from who I am. 

As much as I wish I could detach myself from what can sometimes be considered great ailments or flaws, I am who I am. I am flimsy and easily wavered. I am poetic and also brutally stupid. I will find beauty in rocks and cracked pavement, and hideousness within anything if I’m in the mood. 

That’s truly my point here. The conclusions I draw, either intellectually or artistically, are solely my own interpretations. I know that I know nothing. And the very fact that I think I know this, is something I consider a flaw. I will paint the universe however I see fit, and that doesn’t mean I change its fabric. 

Everything remains and moves forward with or without me; there’s nothing I can do about it. And along with everything else, stands me, remaining with it. Even when I’m dust, my being remains. Whether in memory or to feed plants, my existence remains.

“Oh, I’m alone — except for the sound of insects flying around, they know my red blood is warm still.”

— The Microphones’ “My Warm Blood.”

The warmth of my blood permeates through me, whether or not I’m knowledgeable of it. The Earth knows my worth, the bugs know my worth. They think nothing of it because it is simply fact. What do we, we being the intellect, truly know? 

And now I ask, how many times has your spirit been broken because of what you thought you knew? Learn to adapt, my friend. Know how little is known, and watch information and beauty pass through you gentler than ever before. Stubbornness and pride have no place in the story of your happiness.

Anthony Morris is an opinion writer. Contact them at [email protected].