“Why is it that you have more practice describing weaknesses than strengths? It’s not your fault they never went to the lengths to teach you how to value your strengths.”

If I could reverse time, I would spend more time looking into what ailed my loved ones – would have learned more about medical gaslighting.

Here you are, another heartache to guard under my wings as I wait wondering when it’ll be time for me to fly.

To be understood is to be on part of the path to inclusivity.

To be understood and accepted could change so many lives.

People struggle with words that spill and overwhelm you because they themselves are sinking.

I still have a scar from the time someone said, ‘Sometimes love isn’t enough.’

I don’t think anyone really gets my attachment to the little things. They call it insignificant and say that it is what it is. I think it all adds up to what we stand for. The little things add up to something meaningful and so does the complacency.

I bear the fruits of your memory in the expression of my art for that is what you gave to the world.

Body and mind aren’t separated. And so all these things I write, they are felt in the aches of my heart.

I grew up learning history about communities that would support their people (the idea that it takes a village), but all I see are so many people left on their own.

When the silence fades and now sounds begin to bloom, I will grow to feel calm again. Healthily this time.

My words decay. I grow as they fray, unbecoming in the passage of time.

I overwhelmingly write from sadness – in songs, in prose, in verse.

I search for comedy scripts / I watch happy shows / In hopes that laughter will be the remedy I end my day with.

I hide myself in the galaxies of my creations – unsure of who I am beyond that.

I wonder why I’m so empathetic, why people perceive me to be so kind. I don’t want my heart to burn when there’s no one burning mine.

I’m always described as ‘cocksure’ or ‘with a swagger,’ and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity.

A picture is never anything but its own plural description.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Or those who still believe that language is ‘only words’ and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.

I don’t feel any pressure from fans. But I’m always in some kind of state of emotional turmoil. I would not describe myself as happy-go-lucky. That’s not to say that I’m not happy.

And when you clear away the cobwebs of the description of every job in the world, at the bottom of that job is service.

Worrying that banning flag desecration would inhibit free speech reveals a misunderstanding of the flag’s fundamental nature.

The treasure I have found cannot be described in words, the mind cannot conceive of it.