my journey with this has been interesting. i'm starting to realize that (at least personally), gender and sexuality are very fluid.

prior to this summer, i think i was super rigid about it, as in: i'm very definitely much only into people that identify as female. now, i can still confidently say i definitely still have a preference with people that identify as female, but i'm also trying to work through comphet and guaging whether or not it is what i think it is.

in terms of gender: just about everyday i wake up and decide which gender i feel closer to? that's the only way i can put it concretely. occasionally, it's for performative reasons (i.e., for a specific person), but mostly due to hormones and other emotionally related factors.

i've known that i'm queer specifically since i was 12 (although obviously there were signs before), so it's interesting seeing how that can change over time and just generally being very accepting of it.

contrary to most people around me, i typically do better on english tests. one of the things i have the tendency to say a lot is, "if i didn't discover code in this life, i probably would have been an artist of some sort." i mean. i can't write for the life of me with my left hand, although people who do are statistically proven to be more creative.

i think it boils down to my sensitivity. as a kid, i was always extra sensitive. (to be honest, i'm not sure if this is a smaller symptom of something bigger because it's definitely a more taboo topic in the environment i'm typically in.) and i kind of grew up on daydreaming as a form of survival, if you will: daydreaming my way out of certain situations, daydreaming about when i could do x, or y, or z, or how awesome i was going to be at this or that and not someone i couldn't stand.

i think i approached art from a much more mature standpoint - that is, i understood the concept of the performativity of art. but one thing i've always been fascinated with is that art isn't a form of duality, you have three audiences: the literal audience, the model, and the artist themselves, who have to be the most interesting characters because: what do they see behind their tools and why do they make the choices they make?

and now i get to the part where i talk about me being an artist: what is the purpose of a personal website? why am i telling a (potentially) random someone on the internet all my deepest fears and secrets (i.e., i'm queer but still in the closet to most people that i ~should~ consider to be close to me in real life)? i think it's because i don't really know you, so i can trust you with a personal website: if you don't like it, you get off, and if you do, you might just stick around. and we could end up as best friends, the whole jizz and jam.

in my opinion, the people who work at the intersection of technology with art (broadly put; art is a lot of things, including but not limited to literature, art, music, philosophy & ethics, politics, and sub-categories like neuroscience and other medical fields) are the most amazing people. i'm glad i've gotten to know so many of these people, and that i get to become one of these people.

first up, i took a look at the genius.

This song started in 2008 with a couple of lines that I didn’t think much of, the first two lines of the verse – the one about dentists in the dark – and then in 2012 I wrote a melody on the ukulele which ended up being the chorus melody. It’s a real patchwork, this song, of images and ideas. I met a magician’s assistant around the time I was writing the song and so she kind of found her way into the song. Michelle Pfeiffer, I don’t know where that came from – I was kind of envisaging a character that had ambitions of stardom or something like that. That’s the kind of character Michelle Pfeiffer was in The Fabulous Baker Boys and that’s what came to mind, so I used that reference to set it up. Once it all came together, it somehow made sense given it’s such an eclectic mix of bits.

but this is the explanation that makes the most sense for me:

I’ve always thought that “left hand man” means that he wants to be her friend. The “right hand man” typically refers to your #1 guy, or in this cause the girl’s boyfriend/husband. He can’t be that person because she doesn’t love him, so he wants to be her #2, or the “left hand man” just to be close to her.

He likes the song she sings but he has a lump in his throat because she is singing about the “right hand man” or the guys she loves, not about the author (who is the “left hand man”). Basically, she sings a great song about the guy she loves, and that guy is not the author. The author is very uncomfortable when she sings the name of the “right hand man” (i.e. the author wishes it was his name that she sings, not the right hand man’s name, which he calls the wrong words).

i put my right hand over on my left shoulder every time i've sung this while on a run, so plenty of people around bu have saw me do it. since then, it's taken on two other meanings for me:

1. my time this summer at hack club, and how this became the intern song
2. being there for someone that you know will never be there for you the way you are

i'm conflicted about this right now. i wrote a letter (and another incomplete one) on a whim. trigger warning: abuse, filial piety. this is something i find very hard to talk about and am struggling with, so i really don't talk a lot about family unless i deeply trust you and know you can relate or are willing to listen.

so that's "home". the truth is, i've never really felt at home anywhere or stayed anywhere long enough for a place to feel like home. the winner for closest place has to be bay ridge, brooklyn (i call it babe ridge because it feels like home) and generally nyc, although it's changed since i last checked it out. i do want to move back sometime. i like park slope.

college. last thing i want to talk about. i do plan on going. i just don't know if i want to go next year. i know where i want to go, or what i might want to do otherwise. it's nice having options, but not nice having other people force you into one option or the other, which is what i'm struggling with right now.

i could take a gap year. i could check out shopify's dev degree. i could apply to colleges (cmu, uc berkeley, harvey mudd, uwash, dartmouth, brown, and umich ann arbor are the ones that have grown on me). i could just do nothing and go backpacking. the future is expansive. the one thing i've learned from this summer is that every good adventure must come to a close, but only so you can embark on an even better one. in other words, go with the flow.

• an existential crisis a day keeps the self-esteem away
• i think my day is shit. then i look at mbta and realize how things could be so much worse. mbta is my spirit entity!
• cities are hubs of hedonism but i'm conflicted about hedonism itself and what qualifies as hedonism
• people watching is so much fun
• i ain't never met a art student who wasn't anything but gorgeous
• the dorian gray effect is so freaky. like how can two people with the same name look so similar
• imagine if i shaved all of my hair as a bet
• roof hopping
• artists on a tote bag: taylor swift, conan gray, gracie abrams, dominic fike, pale waves, baby queen, lorde, nf, the chainsmokers, reneé rapp, melanie martinez, fletcher, the last dinner party, charli xcx, eden (in that order)