Escaping Bird Jail

Nana, is that a jail?

My four year old grandson is standing at the living room window looking at a bamboo bird cage I hung from a branch of the large panicle hydrangea.

No, my love, it’s a cage. (Semantics!)

Do you put birds in it? He asked.

I don’t put real birds in it but sometimes I put a pretend bird in there.

I don’t like the bird jail. He says quietly.

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My art practice is a tiny, pink wren’s egg. At just half an inch long, I’m able to nestle it between the fleshy rolls of my thighs, keeping it warm as I wait for it to crack open come Spring. I feel the egg quivering. Inside, the wide mouth of creativity stirs with hunger, yawns, bares its throat and lets out a stream of peep, peep, peep, let me out, let me out, let me out.

I’m bored.

I’m in a cage.

This cage is Substack-shaped. I’m forced to contort myself to fit in but I’m getting bigger and the cage is getting smaller.

I’m bored of writing commentary on my life. I’m bored of reading other people’s commentary on their lives. I’m bored of the endless Notes. I’m bored of AI. I’m bored of reading commentary on AI. I’m bored of feeling inadequate, less than, not enough. I’m bored of artists having to churn out writing and art just to maintain a tiny presence on a stupid digital platform that only cares about making $$$. I’m bored of the same old system being reincarnated with a new fancy logo.

I want to create art. I want to experience art. I want to write words that make no sense until five years after you’ve read them. I want to read words that make me say, I have no idea what this is about but I freaking love it. I want my brain to be aroused and seduced. I want to change the colour of the font, draw a squiggly line through my text, bounce a wren’s egg down the margin. I want to escape the walls of the screen and have my words patter onto your desk like a Spring shower. I want to rip this page up and re-assemble it. I want odd, weird, surreal ideas to be fed to me like wriggling worms dropped into my gaping, baby-bird mouth.

Feed me.

A box is a cage.

A cage is a jail.

I wear neither well.

It’s time to rattle the bars, take a knife to the walls, pick the lock. It’s time for a change of pace, a shaking up, an evolution Eve-olution.

It’s time to escape bird jail.

Much love

J x

If this writing makes no sense, good! I’m not here to write AI assisted essays that repeat old ideas or paraphrase someone else’s work. I’m here to show you how wonderfully weird I am. I want you to show me who you are, unfiltered, with no edits. I don’t use AI because it’s a barrier to my original thinking. I’ve tried it, I hate it. If it helps you be more you, great, I’d love to hear how.

From now on, free dispatches will be produced as I feel the creative urge. I predict once or twice per month, but don’t hold me to that. As always, paid subscribers receive videos and notes from behind the scenes that go deeper into my themes.