Come As You Are - Highlight Reel
Come As You Are centers around my jarring experience of "waking up" from high-control religion. While in the throws of this experience, in 2021, I was introduced to GarageBand. I found it to be a useful way to express my feelings before I found the words.
I had never made my own music before. It felt like a way for the discordant parts of my brain to communicate and eventually harmonize. Sometimes it felt as if I was charting years of feelings into minutes. The best part was that it was all for me. It was connection to myself. It was healing.
To exhibit my music, I created three video collages. I mined video I'd captured during my waking up process–experienced or recorded off my television–which felt like a fitting way to document this profound time in my life.
Video: Spiritual Warfare
Music: Not All You
The song Not All You is an expression of rage over the injustice of my experience as someone exiting the Jehovah's Witnesses. The fear of losing my family over cult-mandated estrangement, the anger of my current circumstances, the grief over a lost past and lost future.
This is captured visually in the video collage titled Spiritual Warfare. Throughout is the Geldingadalir volcano, a live-cast I found myself tuning into for most of the pandemic lockdown. I found myself fascinated by the lava flows, the growth of the new rock mass, the erratic activity, and the weather surrounding it. For hours I'd watch this volcano as it mirrored my own erratic eruptions, flow, and growth.
Other visuals include clips from From Beyond (1986), JW Broadcasting (2021), Xena Warrior Princess (1995), Primal (2019), and Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).
Video: Confusion
Music: Neon Fog
While searching for video to pair with music, I came across this recording of myself during a therapy session. It was recorded in 2x speed without audio, so I don't know the content. But I do know this was during a time when I was incredibly confused, anxious, and depressed, in March 2020, 8 months before realizing I was in a cult. I didn't know why I was having panic attacks every time I tried to go to the Kingdom Hall. I hadn't gone to a Jehovah's Witness meeting in years, although I still believed. My body wouldn't let me. I started therapy to try to "fix" myself, to return to the fold, as I believed the longer I was away, the more I was at risk of being killed in Armageddon. I was in an anxious tailspin.
I didn't remember why I recorded myself. Perhaps I was trying to make sense of my chronic confusion, document a time I trusted was temporary, or filling a need to be witnessed in my pain and isolation, even if I was my only witness. As I look back on myself at this time, I give her all the self-compassion I have. I thank you for also witnessing my pain.
Video: Everything I Lived For
Music: Heel By Heel
In Everything I Lived For, we look back on my point of view documenting a decade while I was living in a warehouse artist loft in Cleveland. This space was my playground, a place where I could find my way as an artist. It was my fortress. It was my depression nest. It cracked me open, tore me down, built me up, and was the space and freedom I needed to come into my own.
At about a minute in, we see my view during the 2020 lockdown, when I was at my most depressed. Around two minutes in, I started filming timelapses of myself cleaning the trash that had accumulated around me, which I shared on TikTok. This was a pivotal moment for me as I received encouraging comments from thousands of strangers cheering on my great cleanup.
A little after minute 3, we see a montage of myself smashing birthday cakes. I had my first birthday party in 2021, at age 33, and had heard about babies having a "smash cake" on their first birthdays, so I decided to do that. I loved it so much that I made it a tradition for all my birthday parties.