Parts of your brain are out there, without you
You make the thing, you release it to the world - where it goes from there is anyone's guess.
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Parts of your brain are walking around outside. Without you.
Your ideas. Your beliefs. Your love.
Parts of your brain have morphed and contorted and glommed together to form a body that matches the blueprints you sketched at some point.
Sketched in the air, roughly.
Parts of your brain fattened up, twanged on their synapses like tightly strung ligaments, and are now heading out into the wilderness to find a future.
Without you.
Everything has been leading to this.
Miles and miles and hours and hours of groundwork. Time spent ambling through fields of source materials and now, off into the unknown.
Parts of your brain are, now, currently, striking out toward mountain passes and huts and snowcapped peaks, hoping to find connection.
You wave from the patio of your mind as they disappear from view.
Happy hiking.
Parts of your brain have broken free and are floating off like icebergs. Floating off, without you.
Calved from the glacier of thought, they have sheared off in great sheets of idea ice to drop and explode as a wave in the ocean of goodbye.
Touched by your hand, they have been gently tumbled in the glass of process—your process—before declaring themselves eager to melt into adventure.
And then, and then.
Breaking away, parts of your brain depart from your whole. A berg on the lam.
Off they go, searching for hulls to crack while cloaking their true meaning beneath the surface.
Waiting to roll in lazy surprise.
Waiting to capsize.
These pieces of your brain will sink a battleship, gouge a freighter, or stab at the shells of emotional sailboats, looking for the weakened seams.
Parts of your brain are departing with such sweet buoyancy.
They float away, twisting in the icy light to stretch and catch your eye one last time.
They float on without you.
Safe voyage.
Parts of your brain have taken flight. Without you.
Cleared for departure, they have checked all the instruments, twiddled some knobs, and with your manifest and confidence as a guide, taxied out to the runway.
Moments later, they are wheels up and gone.
They have taken off with a cargo of your imagination.
Taken off with passengers, your dreams.
Parts of your brain are maintaining cruising speed and altitude.
Cabin pressure is optimal.
The blip on the radar is constant and alive.
The pinpoint dot of a glistening fuselage you engineered, constructed, and painted, vanishes into today’s sunset, dropping into the slipstream of tomorrow’s sunrise.
You salute these new coordinates.
Good hunting.
Parts of your brain slip between a closing subway door at the next station. Without you.
Stepping from the platform, ascending stairs, and emerging into a fresh light, bright and with purpose.
Parts of your brain are searching for the café, the gallery, the publishing house, the ears, the eyes, and the hearts of those willing to hold this purpose.
Released to the agitated cities of the big bad and the frightening, you watch as they jump the turnstile to charge another train.
Stand clear of the closing doors.
Parts of your brain have returned. To visit you.
They appear changed. Artfully altered. Delightfully so.
You recognize them—the parts of your brain that wandered off without you—as having once belonged to you.
You marvel at their new interpretation.
Of them.
Of you.
By others.
You touch upon their scars and broken brows. Their roughhoused signals misfiring or making new sounds.
They have been handled by the world—just or unjustly—and require a reset. A pep talk. A shove.
Welcome home.
Now, scram!
Parts of your brain are striking out for the coast.
Parts of your brain have set up a stall and are selling wares in Mexico.
Parts of your brain are helping people sleep in a crowded hostel.
Parts of your brain are disappearing in the world, destined for the eventual footnote of your memory.
Parts of your brain are making mothers cry.
Parts of your brain are flipping wigs.
Parts of your brain are crying to come home.
Parts of your brain are out there begging for imitation. To riff or to rip.
Parts of your brain are out there meeting new neurons and connecting and being absorbed into the lifetime blood of someone.
Right now.
Finding purchase.
Finding home.
Without you.
Always yours, but now someone else’s too.
There’s that saying. The one that says having a child is like having your heart walking around outside your body.
But what about your art?
Creating. Executing. Sharing.
Making the thing and letting it go is like having parts of your brain living outside of you.
What you produce—these, those, that.
Your creative art children.
Parts of your brain head out into the world to meet strangers and have experiences and learn and grow and become what they yearn for and are destined to be.
Without and within you.
Your only job is to keep them alive.
You are scattering parts of your brain to the world.
You are seeding all the fields.
You are using metaphors for shovels.
You are the brain disperser.
You are the giver of the giving of.
Brainscapes and playdates.
Under glass, we are forever waving goodbye.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇
This week’s amends…
“I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career,” she writes, “and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”- Sinead O’Connor
I’ve had this one from the NYT saved for a long time (since 2021) and just re-read it. Strong women. Don’t mess with ‘em.
She was still a teenager when she started work on her fierce, ethereal first record, “The Lion and the Cobra,” when an executive — “a square unto high heaven” — called her to lunch and told her to dress more femininely and grow out her close-cropped hair. So she marched to a barber and shaved it all off.
On Rotation: “Save it for Later” The English Beat
An interview with the artist, John Kenn. View more of his ridiculously grand post-it note art. See more of them at the interview.
$27,000 for a pair of jeans (that aren’t even jeans). Twas actually the shoes that caught my eye… More at Highsnobiety.
Via Neatorama