Friday, January 03, 2025 @ 08:13 MST - Sunday, January 05, 2025 @ 13:26 MST
We're all in this together; if I live the life I'm given, I won't be scared to die.
~ The Avett Brothers
Hi.
Happy New Year.
Welcome to the year 2025, a number which is a perfect square. This makes me feel giddy beyond belief. The last perfect square year was 1936, and the next one will be 2116. I was not alive for the former, and I will not live to see the latter (barring major advances in health care, which I would require access to... seems unlikely).
I have an affinity for numbers. Times infinity. Sideways 8.
It is nice.
It is nice to take so many photos and not feel judged by someone.
Do you want to know how many pictures I have in my camera roll just from January 1st-3rd, 2025? Nine hundred and ninety-three. 993. That includes photos, videos, and screen shots I have taken, or pictures people have sent me and I have saved to my phone since midnight on New Year's Day -- 00:01 MST to be exact... I missed actual midnight in my time zone this year; I was on a last minute, end-of-the-year, self-care mission: I took out the trash.
In less than three days' time, within just over 56 hours, I have accumulated 993 digital items of imagery.
And I do not feel bad about it. I will not apologize for this.
This is who I am.
Hi. I am Jess and I like to photograph lots of stuff. Randomness. Chaos. Patterns. Nature. Life. Unassuming. Reassuring.
I take a look from strange angles and think the most mundane of things are really the most extraordinary. (See: my song Again, among others I have written I am sure)
I lay low in the dirt and look up or stand high on some rocks and peer down. Look left; look right. Upside down. Downside up. Diagonal. "I don't like these," I tell my physical therapist. The diagonal ones are always hard. But I do them anyway. Perspective.
Yesterday a person passed by while I was snapping this dandelion at dusk. It was striking to me! The dandelion, I mean.
The human was probably wondering what I was doing looking at a weed, while crouched down in crusty grass littered with dog piss. We make eye contact momentarily and I laugh awkwardly. Ha. Haha. Hahahahaha. Aha. Ah. Eh.
I want to be pretty in the way wild flowers hidden in the most unlikely places are pretty, I want people to stop and think, wow she changes the way that I see weeds.
~ Whitney Hanson.
This. This is the way I strive to live my life.
There is value to every person, every animal, every plant, every print, every tree, every cactus, every prick, every rose, every thorn, every fungi, every eyelash, every eyelash mite, every parasite, every paradise, every parachute, every organism, every organ, every drop of blood, every grain of sand, every rock, every boulder, every snowflake, every spec of dust -- on this planet and in the universe. Universes. Seas. University. Teas.
If you start living your life in symbiosis with the other creatures and things of this universe -- from the tiniest of atoms to the grandest of galaxy clusters -- your life will change. Your life will change because you are changed. You will come to know and understand humility. Community.
"Nothing about us without us."
This is an expression often used among disabled individuals. One cannot advocate on behalf of a group of individuals without even providing them a seat at the table.
Ask the question: why are so many tables not accessible in the first place?
Why are tables missing seats, spaces, place settings, broken, have no room for the marginalized? For the misfits?
Are you making room for misfits? Or people who have alternative support needs from yourself? How are you doing this?
Note: you do not have to be perfect. That is absolutely absurd. I was stuck there for a long time until I realized if that were the case, literally none of us would get there.
Do one small thing. Just one. You can decide what that thing may be.
Add captions to your videos. Add an image description to your pictures and videos as often as you can. Direct people to where they can find lyrics at your events -- work to make this happen! Can you offer noise-canceling headphones and fidgets at your event for people who may want or need them if the sounds become too loud or they become overstimulated? Do you know ASL or multiple languages or know someone who does (or are willing/able to pay them) so that you can offer translation services for your event? Are you able to print menus, lyrics, instructions, signs in Braille?
If playing or visiting a new venue, ask management about accessibility. Are there wheelchair accessible ramps? Is the place inviting for LGBTQ+ people? Are the bathrooms gender neutral? Are the bathrooms wheelchair accessible? Is there a changing station available for parents of any gender (not just women)? Are there accesible parking spaces with plenty of room located close to the venue?
These are but a few suggestions that come to mind, as a music therapist who works with diverse clientele who constantly and consistently show and express their needs, and as an ever curious and willing-to-learn human who follows a multitude of content creators on social media.
To be clear: I cannot and have not done all of the aforementioned items. But I am working on it. Them. Some of them. Slowly. Surely. Little by little. If you have any suggestions, kindly let me know. I am open to new ways to make my gigs accessible in the future, and my goal and my hope is to encourage others to do similarly.
It breaks my heart to hear countless stories of people who wish they could attend events, but there are physically no spaces built in which they fit. Literally. The spaces do not yet exist. In most or many places. Or if they do exist, they are often for show. Surface. Superficial. Artificial.
We can build these spaces. We can make them. Create them. Together. Do not wait for the rich to solve our problems; do not wait for a "later" that may never come. Start small. Start now.
Perhaps most importantly: are you noticing the person who did show up, sitting in the corner by herself at an event, where most everyone else seems to have brought a friend? Do you go over and say hello?
We want her to return. We want her to feel involved. Connected. Welcome. Be awkward. Say hi. If she wants you to go away and she says so, respect her space, but gently let her know you are here and you see her. She is welcome.
It is nice.
I tried making plans with people before and during the New Year this year. I tried. I really did not want to be alone but ultimately I ended up alone on another travel adventure, just like I often do.
But then I read something by the ever-so-wise Tiffany Hammond that snapped me back to reality. Here is a woman who KNOWS what it is like to feel loneliness. Aloneness. Oneness. And loveliness.
Knowing that lonely will be a companion.
Morbid, I know, but I ain't gonna lie to you. I write that this helped me the most because it gave me an expectation and not a surprise. I will do better with something predicted rather than not.
This is a journey I have traveled alone and by myself for quite some time. I will gain help here and there along the way, but then it will go right back to me being alone again. And I am lonely on this path for a number of reasons that are too long for this post, but what keeps me from not giving up on this journey is my knowing that it was going to be like this. I knew I was going to teach my children on my own. I knew I was going to have to learn on my own, raise money on my own to pay for things our insurance would cover. I knew I would have to search high and low for help. By myself.
And when I know these things, I am not surprised by them. I push through them. I still seek assistance, guidance, advice, but l am not let down anymore when I do not find it.
Tiffany Hammond. She was answering a recent question asked by a Speech-Language Pathologist regarding what has helped her the most in her communication journey with her sons. Tiffany is a Number One New York Times Best-selling Author and one of the fiercest advocates I know on social media who understands and speaks to the nuances of autism in such a beautiful, clever, blunt, and often humorous way.
Please follow and support this woman if you are not already. You might just learn something about yourself, your own family, or people who are marginalized.
You can find Tiffany on the Instant Grams: @fidgets.and.fries
and on Patreon:
Loneliness is loveliness. I wrote this in a previous post. It is true and it is quite helpful.
I say this to you as much as I say this to and for myself. My goal and hope through my music, through my work as a music therapist, through my writing, and through the way I live my life is to foster and build community, in my own slow processing, neurodivergent, introverted, always awkward way. I refuse to believe we were meant to traverse this universe alone.
And yet.
We are so often alone. Bastante sola. Each of us. Be ONE with your aloneness. Be brave. Take comfort in that. Be ok with not being ok.
The harsh truth is, we could be surrounded by people and still utterly alone.
Trust in your truth and trust in your message. Trust in your mission. I often think of the great artists, visionaries, poets, writers, scientists, and philosophers of this world and most of them struggled with anxiety and depression and ultimately felt and were completely alone.
I am not trying to romanticize loneliness; I am saying that perhaps solitude can be your friend if you are willing to shift your perspective.
For it is in solitude that we learn more about who we are, and can use that knowledge ultimately to help ourselves and in turn help others.
It is nice.
I took out the trash, took a solo trip, soaked in some hot springs, soaked in the fresh air, took a long walk by the water and woods, took so many photos, and caught both the sunrise and sunset for a spiritual start to this New Year.
I played my first gig of the year at Margin Notes Bookbar the other night, which is always a good time. I met some new people and connected with some familiar faces. It was lovely to share tunes and stories.
Happy 2025.
What kind of year are you having so far? Where would you like your year to go from here?
Sending lots of love and light your way, wherever you are physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. ✨
Love,
Jess KAPS
Now the body is not a single part, but many.
If a foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
Or if an ear should say, “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended.
If they were all one part, where would the body be?
But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I do not need you.”
Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary, and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable we surround with greater honor, and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety, whereas our more presentable parts do not need this.
But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.
If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.
~ 1 Corinthians 12:14-26; New American Bible
Comments