In These Shells is my first zine. It’s a personal zine filled with photography and unpublished writing and is almost finished. It will be for sale at Pete’s Mini Zine Fest (along with a bunch of other good stuff) or maybe even before that online.

After years of creating work online, it’s satisfying to finally be creating something that will be available in a physical format. It’s probably going to be a bit quiet over here in the next few weeks, there are quite a few projects that I am currently working on and I generally don’t feel like writing online these days.

I’m not quite sure why exactly – perhaps I’m finally starting to find the digital realm limiting? It’s never seemed this way before (and I have been posting art and writing online for over a decade now), but recently I’ve been feeling more and more of a disconnect between my personal work and the web.

It makes me sad to write this, but the web no longer seems like a personal space… now it’s overrun with people trying to make money off it, rather than connect with others on a deeper level. But what kind of depth can one expect from a medium that leaves out so much human warmth?

It’s been a good time for me to discover other media, people and New York City in ways that I never have before. I’ll probably always be online in some form or another, it’s too valuable a medium to disengage from completely. I’m just not sure exactly in what capacity anymore.

It’s been an interesting, contemplative time for me. Life is changing in unforeseen, new ways that feel strangely familiar. I’m also really excited to share my new projects as they continue to grow and unfold.

I’m currently going back and forth between these two versions of this first image from Leaving These Shores – a collaboration with the talented and inspiring Sophia Remolde, that I’m currently editing. I love the starkness of the first image, but the second is what I had originally planned for this series (and what I posted for today’s daily image).

I’m probably going to see how I feel about this over the next few days, but if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them over email or twitter.

As for the presentation format of the final images, it’s going to be something I haven’t done before, so I’m pretty excited :)

We can talk about heavens and hells, gods and karma. Past lives, different realms of living and being, the possibilities of positive thinking. Flow, even, and hero’s journeys.

But really,
it’s you and me. Standing here, in this moment.

The title of today’s daily image (and this entry) is inspired by something a really good friend of mine said to me recently,

“I came here to find myself, but I realized that I was never lost.”

She was talking about travel, and moving to places far away from where we were both born.

I spent some time looking through some of my old work. The last few years (and most of my life, really) have been fraught with so much self-doubt. I’ve known all the while that I love to create fiercely and passionately and that it’s really my reason for being alive. I’ve also lived in worlds where it’s common for people to keep putting others down (instead of nurturing and helping them up) perhaps out of either competitiveness, deep insecurity or the need to exploit (exploitation after all being built into the nature of our current dominant economic model).

Looking through my old work, things make more sense and I realize that I have been following the path of what’s true to me as much as possible all this while. And it reminds me that no matter what everybody around me says and however they act, no matter how my work is valued (or not valued) in any conventional sense, I know that I have spent my life doing the things that I’ve loved doing. It’s not a question of how ‘good’ you are, or how ‘good’ you want to be (whatever that might mean!)… it’s about what you love right now and how you can live meaningfully with this knowledge. It’s about knowing what’s important to you and figuring out how you can live that as fully as possible.

My work didn’t get better in the conventional sense. My core motivations have never changed. Sure, my techniques have improved and I have gotten better about articulating exactly what I mean. But that’s not why I feel at peace with my art right now. What caused me utter misery in the past was the lie of not being good enough. The lie that if I was truly good that society would reflect this somehow. Letting go of this lie has opened doors I never knew existed and these days I read history and think about alternatives to capitalism and how we can create much-needed new ways of interacting and connecting with others.

It makes me angry to think that everything I love about being human is constantly threatened and attacked by everything I hate, but I will keep choosing not to keep quiet or be silenced. I will keep choosing to open up and create spaces for dialogue, nurturing and understanding.

I’ve always thought about death and often feared it, but I think at the end of the day, when I talk about fearing death what I really fear the most is having a lived a life that I don’t feel good about – a passive life barely lived. Thinking that we are unable to affect the world around us in a big and meaningful way through doing what feels real, right and true in our hearts is probably the greatest lie of all.

Anarchism is the revolutionary idea that no one is more qualified that you are to decide what your life will be.

It means figuring out how to work together to meet our individual needs, working with each other rather than “for” or against each other; and when this is impossible, it means preferring strife to submission and domination.

It means not valuing any system or ideology above the people it purports to serve, not valuing anything theoretical above the real things in this world. It means being faithful to real human beings (and animals, and ecosystems), fighting for ourselves and beside each other, not out of “responsibility,” not for “causes” or other intangible concepts. It means denying that there is any universal standard of truth, aesthetics, or morality, and contesting wherever it appears the doctrine that life is essentially one-dimensional.

It means not forcing your desires and experiences into a hierarchical order, but acknowledging and embracing all of them, accepting yourself. It means not trying to compel the self to abide by any external laws, not trying to restrict your emotions to the sensible or the practical or the “political,” not pushing your instincts and passions into boxes: for there is no cage large enough to accommodate the human soul in all its flights, all its heights and depths. It means seeking a way of life which gives free play to all your conflicting inclinations in the process of continuously challenging and transforming them.

It means not privileging any one moment of life over the others – not languishing in nostalgia for the good old days, or waiting for tomorrow (or, for that matter, for “the” Revolution!) for real life to begin, but seizing and creating it in every instant. Yes, of course it means treasuring memories and planning for the future – it also means remembering there is no time happiness, resistance, life ever happens but NOW, NOW, NOW!

It means refusing to put the responsibility for your life in anyone else’s hands, whether that be parents, lovers, employers, or society itself. It means taking the pursuit of meaning and joy in your life upon your own shoulders.

Above all! It means not accepting this or any manifesto or definition as it is, but making and remaking it for yourself.

- CrimethInc, Fighting For Our Lives