Disclaimer: Hi guys! It’s been a cute minute, but we're here! I wanted to quickly address a few changes coming in:
Audio recordings of my posts will now be exclusive to paid subscribers. I looove recording for you all and have gotten AMAZING feedback, but between writing, recording, and editing…? It’s so labor-intensive, whew. The paid subscriptions help as an encouragement to keep up the good work. I appreciate anyone who decides to drop some coin and even those who are unable to but still enjoy my posts.
Sunday evenings are for long posts such as this, and Thursday mornings will now be for art updates. Things I’m watching/reading/listening to/enjoying on the internet/news posts that are informative. Like I said, I’m tryna share things outside of myself and put people on. If you’d like that, I hope you’ll like these, starting this week!
I have more on the way, but these are some nuggets for now!
Once again, thank you so much for your readership and support. Y’all are some of the coolest folks on the app, on God.
Enjoy tonight’s post!
Dear Internet Friends,
Over the past three months, as I lean into my curiosities more, I’ve come to a wonderful dilemma:
I’m a writer who loves to write stories, but I’m also an artist who loves to create/write about art. And I’ve discovered lately that I want to marvel and obsess about it, to the point of doing so full-time.
I’ve been imagining me being invited/flown to attend opening nights for new and eccentric exhibitions. Attending live music shows produced by sonic geniuses. Seated center row to watch cinematic films with off-the-wall themes and visual prowess. Going to workshops teaching the community about rebuilding agriculture and enforcing sustainability. Eating my way through a chef’s journey from their plates, where they craft dishes from a marriage of history and imagination—
And then, I’d write about what I’ve found, while also curating experiences just as invigorating for me and my friends, documenting all of it. Showing how one can curate intimate opportunities for creation all on their own.
The thought of being regarded, trusted, and paid to indulge in the beautiful things people make…? Being a vessel from whom people in search of a delightful experience can come to…? And me simply having an “in” on these happenings. The accessibility to the brilliance the world has to offer… oof.
That excites me so much. I haven't been this excited in a minute.
I went back home to Brooklyn in December. To put it lightly, it was one of the most heralding experiences I desperately needed. As detailed briefly in my last post, I went through a break-up that freed my mind and spirit, despite how scary it was to end. The courage I stood behind gave me a newfound respect for myself that I didn’t know I could have. I also spent a lot of time with my family. So much so that it felt like we were long overdue for a reminder that our unit was still solid.
I was also my most creative self, the self I tend to drift from when I’m in LA. I wrote to myself a lot. Journaled, took notes, explored my mind from a safe place and not a judgmental one. Every trip back home, I prepare for my most artistic and curious side to emerge, because NYC naturally heightens my senses once I land.
I explored the crevices of art, from the brownstones to the high-rises, from Brooklyn to the Bronx. I visited exhibitions, such as “Spike Lee: Creative Sources,” over at the Brooklyn Museum (which I make it a mission to visit every time I’m here) and “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility,” over at the Guggenheim Museum. I ate at restaurants in Chinatown and diners in Bedstuy, where I house-sat for a friend and explored the neighborhood as if I lived there (one day, Cyn). I went to a queer and West Indian Christmas party hosted by a friend, where we got drunk off Coquito and blasted ‘70s Soca on vinyl. My family and I also got professional portraits done, the first time since the last one we took, almost 25 years ago.
As the weeks went by and my vacation was coming to a close, I realized that art never fails to rejuvenate me when my spirit is thirsty for beautiful things. Over the last three years, thanks to my time living in New Orleans and my curiosity about the world I was now a contributor to, my appreciation for beauty became… paramount.
When I am depressed, I know it’s because I haven’t walked across a row of fresh flowers, or visited an institution of art. I haven’t danced around my living room to Teena Marie as I cook a new meal, or I’ve gone too long without getting lost in a book….
Or, most importantly, I struggle to remember the last time I wrote from the heart.
I returned to Los Angeles at the top of the new year to a quiet apartment and a life that had been altered due to the void of a person’s place in it, and a change of my heart/mind. I understood that this break-up had now forced me to look around at the stuff I have, and after a few days of mourning, I learned that I have quite a bit of stuff. Plenty, actually.
One of them was my curiosity. My thirst for beauty. They were still in tact and some of my favorite parts of myself. So, I turned to art and my community, something people tell me is difficult to build (and can be, honestly. A lot of us don’t have friends, strong/inspiring friendships, or communities with people who don’t look like us). But I counted more than 10 people who live in this city, and with whom I can celebrate anything with, and… I don’t know. That says something, right? After two years of living here, I had a little tribe.
I decided I wanted to invite these people to my home. Host a gathering of some sort, which I haven’t done since living on my own. That made me immediately panic because something so strong within me knew I had to do it, no matter how imperfect. Execution, something that scares me a great deal, would fill the void this season.
God tasked me to lean in heavily. I had grown some courage… I had to keep it going.
For Valentine’s day, I chose to bask in the power of love by inviting these friends over to engage in a dinner + listening party called, “Love Notes,” where we listened to R&B music that completely and utterly exemplifies the blessing that love is and provides.
Not a single song played illustrated lust (which can be deluded to mean love but mostly means the hunger for sex), heartbreak, casualty in pursuit, etc. It was about the shameless appreciation one person has for another.
I fed my friends spicy turmeric rice with shrimp, garlic broccolini, hot + sweet honey chicken wings, and chocolate-covered strawberries. I decked my home with candles and dim light, filled cups with the wine they brought… and together, we sat on my couch and on the plush of my rug listening to jam after jam.
We took breaks in between to discuss the music, from the instruments to the lyrics, the mood it set, and the memories it conjured, all while “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” played on my TV screen on mute (as shown above).
(When recounting the whole thing to my writer’s room the following Monday, one of the writers said, “That’s very ‘90s. Very very Brooklyn.” I smiled so damn wide, because, if that is not me, IDK who it is—)
Our discussions on love flowed through the night as we got loose from the wine, high off the intimacy. We were all reminded how difficult it is to invest in music that praises love from a heart space, because it sometimes feels too good to lean into the heartbreak. The “ain’t shitness”. How fresh it felt to revisit goooood music. How long it had been since they’d been in love, they forgot what it could feel like. What love even meant anymore.
I ended the night handing them roses and personalized ‘Love/Thank You’ notes, and people begged me to do this again. My home made them feel immense comfort, and they were honored to be invited. When the last person left and I cleaned up, I sprawled across my couch, overwhelmed with exhaustion and purpose. My head was buzzing with opportunity.
Because I realized that THIS, my friends, is what the next era of my life is meant for: reintroducing people back to themselves from an artistic and sensory heart space.
Immediately, I came up with another event: attending the opening reception of an art gallery (a separate post about that) that’s kicking off Frieze LA weekend titled, “DEJA VU,” at the Abigail Ogilvy Gallery. A group exhibition featuring women of color artists of multiple disciplinaries hailing from NYC around the power of escapism.
To keep it simple, I made a calendar invite and plugged all the people I’d want there, gave info about the exhibition in the description, and told everyone that if they wanted to go, confirm the RSVP. If you can or can’t make it, no problem. Regardless…? I was gonna be there.
Baby… my friends showed up. One of them drove from San Diego! We all got dressed up, sipped wine, and fraternized with folks we didn’t know. We observed the art and discussed our thoughts. We made connections on our own terms. We got creative together. And then we went out for dinner and drinks and had tantalizing conversations that woke us UP and gave us belly laughs.
The next morning, one of my friends told me that this had been the most fun they’d had in LA, and I was the one who curated both of those times.
A second friend who couldn’t attend the art show but came for “Love Notes,” left the text above, saying that since getting reacquainted with true love music, it’s opened up their writing, which they took a backseat from. They encouraged me that I have a gift for this, for bringing people to their creativity. And I felt so… ugh. Idk. SEEN.
When I tell you I’m not someone who hosts people or curates events? It’s not something I’m used to, at all. But since being back, something in me has opened up because of these experiences that have forced me out of a shell. And it was art. It was all art and my obedience to it.
My growing fascination for art can very well be its own escapism from the traumas, abuses, and genocides of the world.
I’ve found that while I keep up with the updates detailing travesties such as the extermination of Palestinians happening in Gaza, the embarrassment that is United States politics and this cycle’s presidential election, the control over female reproductive rights, the cost of living being too damn high, and a plethora more of societal destruction, I have leaned on art to cope.
I desperately need my timelines to showcase a balancing act to keep me from going crazy because we’re all one disaster closer to fully losing it.
My eagerness to share with people such beautiful things and cultivate experiences that nourish the soul comes from a deep yearning to contribute to this planet that’s constantly forgotten, and its people who are highly distraught from living day to day caged in the mind.
All of us are not well. And while there are degrees to the sickness that delusion, poverty, shame, burn-out, and identity crisis worsen, the point is that we are all suffering.
I look at this newsletter, and I want to speak about so much more than self-growth when community is right there. There is such a heavy, saturated market of growth speakers. And while I love growing, I think there is an obsession with being “better humans”. So much so, that we constantly use new explorations as benchmarks of just how great a human we’re becoming, and we don’t sit still enough to understand why we even do what we do.
I have gradually been learning through conversation with brilliant and bright-minded individuals that being a better human means looking to the one beside you and asking, “What do you need?” Using your gifts as tools to strengthen our communities. Rebuilding culture and stabilizing faith from a practical position. Creating a foundation for our futures together. Getting back to original form. Ensuring that you are not governed by the -isms that threaten you, but leaning on the power of your imagination to imagine and create a better home.
It might feel very… divine feminine, lol. A co-opted buzzword, unfortunately. But, if I’m being frank, we need it desperately right now. And there is nothing more divine and closer to God than creating.
I know why I love art. It is the greatest flex of a human’s imagination. It charts truth in code that details the points of history we are living or REliving. It teaches me how to pay attention to something outside of myself. It asks me to shut the student off and be a lover of life. It introduces me to new ways of expression, languages I didn’t know could be spoken in these tongues. It reminds me that I have a contribution to make. Questions to answer. Bonds to build.
We cannot survive this life if all we are doing is fighting it. That’s no way to live.
We need our replenishment. We need our sanctuaries, our altars, our communities, our weapons, and our spirits. I think art provides all of the above.
I’m now on a pursuit here in Los Angeles to begin building my relationships with artists, curators, musicians, filmmakers, and culinary chefs.
Which is something crazy because for the past two years, LA didn’t feel like a place I could do that in. Everything is so spread apart, the culture can be very shallow, and the art lacking in expression versus clout. It took me (and is STILL taking me, tbh) a while to allow NYC to be what it is and not expect LA to be the same, but I had to understand what my cravings were.
If what I want is art, I must submit to the challenge of finding it. And the moment I began, starting with this listening party I hosted, a huge surge of art LA has to offer began emerging on my radar. There is a lot that I will be covering because this space will change to art exploration. Stepping fully into my aesthete persona, lol.
I’m excited to go all in. My passion for art is so… ugh. IDK. It’s like walking through a garden on the first day of Spring and discovering, behind a community of tulips, a bunny hop out. It’s exciting. It’s like a sign of life, that tides are turning. And those tides are usually your interpretation of the world. Art makes you redefine all that you thought.
I trust that wherever my artistic curiosity begs me to give attention to, the moment I do, everything elevates. So far, the elevation has been my heart, my mind, my spirit, my creativity, and my community.
I wonder what’s next. But, no need. It’s already coming ;)
Love,
Cyn
Thank you so much for your support, guys. After some much-needed time away, I am eager to get back to writing. There’s so much I’m ready to share as my life becomes more active.
Stay tuned!
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