somewhere, still here.
02
An amplifier that belonged to my uncle.
One of the first people who taught me that making things mattered.
The strange thing about difficult years is that they don't just test your resilience.
They test your belief.
Not belief in a grand sense.
The smaller things.
Romance.
Art.
Friendship.
The possibility that life might still surprise you.
For a while, I wasn't sure what I believed anymore.
Not because those things disappeared.
Because the evidence felt harder to find.
And yet I kept collecting fragments.
A signed amplifier.
A bathroom mirror.
Neon lights.
Graffiti layered over older graffiti.
Friends after midnight.
Photographs that felt important before I knew why.
I think I've always been searching for the same thing.
Connection.
Wonder.
Proof that people are more interesting than the stories we tell about them.
Proof that there are still movie moments left.
The older I get, the less certain I am about what life is supposed to look like.
The timelines.
The milestones.
The narratives we're handed about success, love, art, adulthood.
Most of them seem made up anyway.
What remains are the things I've always believed in.
Music.
Creation.
Curiosity.
The people who show up.
The people who stay.
And the possibility that around the next corner, there's still something worth finding.
Somewhere, still here.
“Still believing in everything I always believed in, even without evidence of it.”
