I haven’t felt much like writing lately, to be honest.  I finished my Yuletide assignment (more on that…sometime) and a few oneshots and I’ve pretty much just stalled out since then.  It isn’t only because Thanksgiving is busy and as the year draws to a close I find I have more things to do than days in which to do them.  And it isn’t the fading of daylight that saps my energy just as the gift of it in summer restores it.

It’s been a long few weeks in the world.  For everyone, I think.

I’ll try to put something coherent and blog-worthy together next week.  I will.  Until then, I’m going back to what holds me up no matter how long and cold and dark and miserable the days — music.

This is a masterful cover of an already-amazing song, and I think it is a different kind of brilliant from the original.  It’s getting a lot of airplay on our local radio, which I appreciate.  We need these words, this reminder, this anthem.  We all do.

We can’t be silent.  And we can’t let silence stifle us.

And we cannot turn away from starkness.

Find your voice.  Find your song.  Find your scream, if that’s what you discover inside yourself.  Find it and hold onto it.  Breathe life into it.  Breathe passion into it.

Fight the urge to stop listening and give in to silence.  Fight it to the death.

Fill the silence with art.

Art is need and joy and fear given form.  Art in any practice, be it music or painting or stapling together a gif, is the bridge between what we hold inside us and what we offer to the world.  I believe that every time you allow a single burning star to emerge from the galaxy of your soul, you nudge the world forward.  Maybe a little or maybe with the force of a hurricane, but it doesn’t matter how much.  Even if no one sees it or understands it or likes it.  You have CREATED.  The act of creation is miraculous.  Every time.

My art may never really reflect my spirit; my skill is definitely lacking when compared to my vision.  But having created something, there will always be an ember of it, a spark, a flame somewhere in the world that lasts long past when I ‘finish’ it.  If someday silence comes, if fear stifles me, all the art that I have already given life will speak for me.  My voice and my soul will still lend their strength to the motion of the world long after my own courage has faded.

Join me.  Sing, write, draw, make.  Live in the deepest expression, however it comes.  Even once.  Fearlessly, recklessly, unapologetically.

Scream into the coldness of the world.  Dare it to scream back.

Add to the fire even just one spark.

Winter’s gonna be brutal.  Help us all keep the world warm.