@hollytruhlar

The other day I half-woke from a nap and scribbled down the line: “the normalization and curation of collapse.”

It’s about the ways the over-culture, celebrities, politicians, the wealthy are pretending everything is normal. While we watch a holocaust livestream into our psyches, they churn out albums and merch about the show of it all. It’s like: Nothing to see over there, let me entertain you and continue to drain your community of resources—including our money, time, attention, & nature.

It’s also about how we’ve all been trained to pretend we’re okay, when we’re really not okay. No one I know is okay. We are struggling. Many of my dearest kin are in crisis. And we’re mostly not publicly talking about it. Or, if we are talking about polycrisis and collapse, it’s usually curated because to be totally unhinged would mean being deemed illegitimate, unreliable, not credible. That likely means loss of income & exile.

That’s why lately I’ve been quieter, doing things with my hands: embroidering, hide tanning, creating altar offerings. I’ve felt something moving in the collective, & in me. Some response, some needed evolution we haven’t yet embodied. And I’ve been telling people: “There’s a level of complexity here that I can’t yet integrate.” So I stare at shadows moving across the grass. I stitch colors into my jacket (my technicolor grief coat). I talk to people who are being real about how deeply they’re collapsed.

I know some will say it’s a luxury to collapse; that not everyone can just fall apart. That’s true, & I feel it. As a chronically ill, neuroqueer, single person who’s been through devastating loss, I know what it’s like to not be able to afford to break down while also being shattered across the underworld.

Yet, it’s the movement we’re in. We can’t be composed while what’s needed is our decomposing. We have to stop performing okayness. We need to start speaking to how truly needy, lonely, & exploited we are. How unsustainable & soul-sucking the overculture is.

We are collapsing. Let us live this truth out loud. In our breaking down, we become life for each other.

How real can we get about the depths of our unraveling?

What Does Your Stupid Art Even Do for the World?