Leave a Mark, Not a Scar: An Interview with Jeremy Mann

NATALIA JORUK

Though there are many artists who work across multiple mediums to push the boundaries of what they can create, very few leave an impression as bold or veracious as that of Jeremy Mann’s. As a preeminent artist showcasing across the US and supported by an impressively large global following, his merge of classical and contemporary styles provides an alluring space to explore the beauty and darkness in life, and ponder the journeys existing in between.

Quickly rising on the gallery scene, he has continued to cultivate his bespoke pathway as a creator, exhibiting in some of today’s most well-respected contemporary art galleries including Gallery 1261 (CO), The Principal Gallery (VA) and Spoke Art (CA). Well known for his female portraitures and raw city scenes, he has also enraptured audiences by lifting the veil to share a glimpse of his odyssey as an oil painter in the 40-minute documentary “A Solitary Mann” (2015) by French director Loic Zimmermann.

Why red rabbit? (Note: red rabbit is a recurring name used by Jeremy in his website name, Instagram handle, and elsewhere)

It’s a part of my childhood, and I’ve kept that moniker for myself to maintain that link that is often broken from the abuse of “adult life” and luckily for me, it remains in my later years while ya’ll don’t realize I’m still an impudent little child, internally wrought with fear, bursting with curiosity and stubbornness and uncontrollable emotional spasms. So, that works, I suppose. :)

I think many adults can relate to those uncontrollable feelings. In fact, sometimes the very concept of having to be an ‘adult’ drags many into the pits of fear and depression! Do you feel your connection to the impudent little child inside of you opens up another level of creative freedom?

There’s always been that cliché tie to retaining the wondrous mind-set of a child, but that cliché was almost meant to belittle the notion and make the tough lives of the distraught easier to muddle through, but it subverts peoples’ idea of artists as childish. I’m not saying everyone should lounge around naming all the animals in the clouds, but what is important is paying attention to where one focuses their focus. Too soon, too demanding, and too mundane comes the “get a job” lifestyle, which is often followed quickly by a slippery slope into the mundane world of the unhappy worker, a sourpuss fungus which spreads like a single organism far throughout our society. When quite frankly, if young adults were bolstered to immerse themselves into worlds which fascinate them, they would not only eventually have a career in the things that they love, but also their work ethic, drive, intelligence and general enjoyment of life would be greater, worldwide, which would only benefit our culture naturally.

How this mirrors real artist’s lives (not craftsman but the full-on spirit) is pretty spot on, and therefore reminiscent of a free and curious mind unhindered by detrimental outside influences. The “inner child” which is known to be a repressed state, is actually a sad label for one’s true soul.

As an artist, what do you fear?

Currently, Lasik surgery, but aside from that … people. I guess, first thing comes to mind. They scare the hell out of me. And I suppose it’s good that one of the things I fear the most is something I don’t fully understand, and therefore am constantly trying to understand through my art. Therein lies a personal, silent purpose of art, to face the things you don’t understand, and try to figure out the reason for the fear, and in essence surpass it, move above it. But it’s so obscene, the world of people these days. Too many of them with the wrong ideals. Too much attention on the transient and fabricated. A growing lack of awareness, coupled with a growing sense of self-deserving narrowmindedness, and I despise the way it makes me feel.

Artists who are attuned to the deeper beauty of the world, a tune which most artists can hum along to if not fully sing outright, have the unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on what they do with it) side effect of also seeing, by unavoidable comparison, the debase and evil attributes of the world more clearly. How many times I mutter to myself “what is wrong with you” at people I see or hear of. How many times I get depressed about the direction the world is taking, and it feels like… like this morning; when I awoke from a nightmare and you can recall that moment in the dream where you were trying to scream at the top of your lungs, but your voice sounded dull and unformed… then you wake up into reality and find you’re making the same noise... yeah, I guess that’s what I feel these days, I guess that’s what I fear. But it’s ok, I have this shirt with a drawing of a bear and a kitten on it, I wear it out when I feel nervous around people. I think it helps.

You’ve developed quite a repertoire as an artist covering many mediums and subject matters. What creative medium do you find most cathartic, and have there been any which cause you particular challenges?

Oh man, as of this moment I’d definitely say that filmmaking is the most cathartic because it has presented me with a vast barrage of challenges from every angle! My heart lies in creating imagery, whether it be the solid state of an original oil painting, on the screen, or in the mind. But as an artist, I need to face new challenges to keep myself fully immersed, lest I simply become restless and bored of the same thing. I do love this constant movement between mediums, though, because you discover new techniques, thoughts, theories and overcome challenges on a different dimension, that when brought back to the other mediums, present solutions in ways you could never have come up with if you sat on the same small island. Hence how my homemade polaroid cameras began to influence the way I would paint in oils, and even vice versa. I would never have been able to so easily breeze through the composing and colorizing of shots in a film, had I not previously solved all those issues with paint, however… time, sound, and movement among other things (such as directing other characters, perhaps the most difficult for this shut-in) have opened up challenges not yet possible to have been resolved and I am awake and invigorated with the confrontation.

On your website you state that you don’t make prints of your original oil paintings; do you feel prints lose the integrity of the original?

Yes. Fully. And I know it’s a highly debatable ideal in these days, tangled with artist’s financial survival pitted against their own willpower, but I have to stick with m true feelings on this.

I am fully aware that for many artists trying to find ways to support themselves, the quintessential conundrum for most artists (especially beginners) is incredibly difficult not only financially but more so, mentally. And the temptation to make monetary gains by cheaply duplicating an original painting, which can reach a greater collector base due to the low cost, just seems ridiculous NOT to do! But I believe there are evils there that cannot be sensed in the whirlwind. Immediately the original painting loses certain undefinable qualities of its value. It becomes so easily obtainable, mass-obtainable, no longer unique, no longer special.

There are qualities of an oil painting which can only be experienced in person, and any artist must know this. The true size, luster, color, harmony, texture, depth, and more CANNOT be duplicated in any print form. Creating prints actually draws people away from the museums and galleries and the mystifying objects of paintings which, when standing in front of, can bring people to tears or hold their attention rapt for hours. Why would you have to go to Prague to see Mucha’s oil paintings, when you can just get a print shipped to your home? And that is a dangerous thought brewing, for it stagnates, and detracts from the real purposes of art. Even to the creator, why would you struggle and enjoy the time spent creating an original painting alone in your studio, that you would then feel OK making a half-assed version to distribute? It doesn’t inspire that artist to work harder for a solo show, it subconsciously tells them, “well, just make it good enough, then sell cheap prints online and that will equal success.” But then nobody knows what it’s like to hold your baby, to see its true colors, to feel what you felt when you stood before the only one in existence and made it with your own hands.

It’s multifaceted and controversial, I know, and there are many sides to the issue. I don’t like wish-washy people, it’s important to make an informed decision and stand firmly behind it. I won’t have a definite opinion on something until I’ve tried it, and I did try it, I did make one print at one time even when I was fully in belief that it was wrong, because I had to know in order to make a rightful judgment. So I think it’s still a bad idea and will stick to that. Understanding fully that there are people out here who would love to have prints of my art on their walls, and I have gone to the utmost lengths to provide them a better solution. The Collector’s Editions of the books I make include original drawings or landscape paintings, and I would rather do a hundred originals than even one print. People need to see the difference. You hold it differently, don’t you? An original small painting, you don’t tape it to a wall or lose it under books. Even the larger volumes of my books include over 20 actual size paintings in print. In each book there’s about 20 prints for shits’ sake! Cut it out and tape it to the wall like I did with every magazine on my childhood bedroom walls. But the lazy desire for a large cityscape print just peeves me. You won’t “get it”, you HAVE to see it in person, and if I can inspire just one person to go out of their way and travel to see a painting in person, then I rest a little better, for making a pilgrimage to see originals around the world is something I did, and feel strongly that such a journey, with all of its facets, creates a better individual.

Many of your paintings have been displayed around the US and you are represented by quite a few galleries, including Gallery 1261 in Denver. How do you find the gallery scene?

Oh man, can-a-worms about to get opened here *laughs*. I’ve been deeply involved in long lasting, highly respected galleries who’ve raised my representation to the highest and eagerly supported my viewpoints resulting in a relationships undefinable by today’s standards. I’ve also been deeply involved in several galleries who’ve stolen over $35,000 of art, some have skimmed thousands off the top of sales quietly for years, attempted to coerce my creative decisions to benefit their pockets, and some which I simply cannot even fathom why they would function as they do. The gallery scene these days is a complete mess. There are well respected and successful galleries out there, and there is also scum, pure scum. I think, much of the problem can be based upon greed. Monetary greed. When a gallery becomes more interested in selling objects than the actual artists they represent, it becomes a problem. They’re ideals begin to sway toward the pocketbooks of collectors who for the most part, are not involved in what artists want to express, but are a necessary component to their lifestyle.

A true artist will create incessantly and regardless of whether or not they are selling their works successfully, and one who is unwavering from this course will be in my opinion the most successful. This, though, is the brick wall all artists face at one point. However, I also believe it is the gallery’s responsibility not to conform to the needs of the market first, but to drive and respect their artists first, and that requires a special sort of bond. A bond between the gallery and the artist, one which doesn’t often exist these days. When one asks any artist if they fully believe a gallery can “represent” them, meaning, stand in for the artist’s actual voice and hold firmly to the artist’s viewpoint before the collector’s, I don’t believe that to be the majority of those relationships out there. But when an artist finds that, they are in a good gallery. As my old teacher told me, which has ALWAYS been true; if you meet with a gallery director, and you, in your gut of guts, find them to be someone you wouldn’t truly want to have at your house for dinner and a sleepover, then it’s simply going to go south, perhaps not immediately, but eventually, and most definitely.

You can always tell, as an artist at least, when a gallery’s façade resonates with your intent and desires. The front face of a gallery is their artist roster, it tells you everything immediately from the visions of the gallery director to the quality of the artist’s involved and is definitely a good litmus test for the future of that gallery to not only support the artists, but also to last as a forefront for cultural exposure and enlightenment. This was exactly the feeling I had when approached by Dave Ethridge [Director] to participate in a few group shows at Gallery 1261 and soon after a major group show. I have shared many of my crazy ideas with Dave in the past and he’s very open to new ideas, something which again is fertilizer for a wonderful growth of both gallery and artist, and also just soothing to the entire relationship. His presence in the heart of Denver is a great way to reach the middle states of America and to bring incredible new contemporary realist art to the public and will most likely remain as such for quite a long time.

Of course, this question has a zillion different facets to it which I can’t get into here, especially and most sadly for the young easily malleable artists trying to survive out there (myself included), but having the experiences I have had, and the self-respect to trust my own ideals, I believe that to be the metaphor which explains everything.

You’ve recently released your first feature length film, The Conductor, which you’ve described as a story told through a ‘dreamscape metaphor of the eternal artistic struggle’. What triggered you to create this piece?

HA! Nadezda asked if I wanted to do a one-minute video for the promotion of her solo show in New York. A year later, we have this 78-minute film “The Conductor.” I had been creating short videos for a while, as the desire for a new challenge swelled and grew within me as I burnt out on painting. In that year, I had done three solo shows, created and released a new book, taught an intense workshop in Barcelona, and created a feature length film. But during that whole time, that experience of quietly filming behind the curtain, creating new worlds alone in my spaces, all for myself, and wrestling happily with new challenges and ideas, was the most fulfilling. So naturally, that one-minute video was the perfect springboard for me to go nuts. Which, is also a good way to describe the film if you wish: “an emotional painter gets a camera and goes nuts.”

While prints may duplicate yet take away from the original piece, film has allowed you to share your creation right within the home of the many without losing its integrity. Through film, have you created a more direct connection to your audience, or is it just a different type of connection than through your paintings?

Well, I’d definitely say it’s a different type of connection. Wandering into a new medium brings a new world which has its own, albeit metaphorically similar, rules and stigmas. After the film was finished (and I think during, but I was so frustrated and exhausted I can’t really say if I was aware of this, or if it was just the spark that kept me going), I immediately and without hesitation, felt that this medium of film was so ripe with possibilities from every conceivable concoction that I found useful to say and elicit more clearly the things which I believe and feel. It was like discovering the perfect painting tool which made the most beautiful marks that I loved, but with a thousand more possibilities open to me, when the world of simply painting was feeling like an enclosed and limited space.

However, the ability to have the film seen in everyone’s home at any time, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing, or will reach the audience in the way it should. As Tarkovsky and Greenaway believe, and state much more eloquently than I, that due to cinema’s unique power to affect an audience, because we identify the screen with life, the most meaningless commercial film can have just the same magical effect on people as films created as an art form to enlighten. The tragic difference of this, is that if art can stimulate ideas, emotions, and the mind, then so too, because of the easy and irresistible effect of mass-appeal cinema, will those escapist films extinguish all traces of thought and feeling, and are as readily and quickly consumed as dollar burgers and soda pops, diluting to almost nonexistence the artistic capacity of our society’s understanding. Although a highly opinionated ideal, and I only touched upon its complexity and points for or against that, it’s a current theme I’ve noticed in many of life’s facets, and that scares the hell out of me.

With the completion of The Conductor, have you experienced a new sense of fulfilment different from your usual creativity as a painter?

A wonderful new sense of self-fulfilment, and also a larger dismay! The world of film, as I’ve not only come to experience, but also read much about, as one of the newest artistic mediums, appeared right at a time when it could go beautifully into an artistic direction, or into a completely commercial direction. Both of those fields exist, as always in every medium, that two-sided struggle moves forward with unrelenting time. But yes, the fulfilment is much different from painting, so many different facets you couldn’t possibly get into in this short space, but also so many connections. Piecing time together, thousands of hours of time into a form of flashing imagery, and each slight change creates a different pathway for the story or the mood. One of the main reasons I wanted to play in this medium is because of the audience’s attention. Despite the idiots out there who somehow think its OK to use a cell phone in a theatre (and who think they’re being subtle... really though? Grow up.) there is still the fact that, for an hour or two, you have their complete attention, in a dark room, staring directly at what you have created, and they willingly put themselves there for that reason. It’s such a great opportunity to discuss ideals and feelings with people!

Nowadays, people flip through their smartphone of imagery in literally less than seconds, perhaps pausing for a quick tap of the screen, but to fully immerse yourself in a film is a purposefully chosen desire to connect with something deeper, and I’ll do my darndest to get into a medium where people have the wherewithal to give their full attention to art.

I admit, without giving anything away, the opening to The Conductor felt a bit of a curveball to me as the viewer – I wasn’t sure what I was about to watch! Yet, it flows so beautifully into the rest of the film; you take the audience on a real journey through beautiful, surreal and even harrowingly intense scenes. Was it easy to transcribe your vision and emotions into film?

I don’t let the film fool you!! I had no idea what I was doing either! Ha! The two main points I started out with were A.) I want to make my own feature length film without limits and B.) I want to make a point to do it completely on my own. A person who knows how to build every inch of a house, will treat all the contractors with the same respect, for he knows the troubles and successes of each individual, but also he will be able to see far wider connections and possibilities that narrow-minded focus will not allow. If I can do everything from the set building, design, lighting, directing the actors and actresses, locations, musical editing and composing, sound FX, coloring, post production editing and all while behind the camera as well, it’s like tasting everything on the table, I will know more about the next film, or the next painting, or the next photoshoot, then I would if I just focused on a narrow field of vision. And the point to release the film for free solidified my intent internally. It wasn’t to make money. (Obviously... you must realize, I saved up a year’s amount of savings and spent practically all of it just trying to finish this project with no perceivable reward other than I can do it, and people can watch it.) But to transfer my vision to this film was, well... it’s hard to say, I could call it easy, as I was uninhibited, any idea I had, I could do, and nobody could stop me. But it was also difficult because of the learning curves of many things, the exhausting physicality of much of the production, the absolute depth of despair in the moments when you just question, “why the hell am I wasting my time with this!” and the exaltations of self-discovery, through a journey I traversed on my own.

I cannot wait to see what subtleties I garnered from the experience will find their way into my paintings, and that in itself was a purposeful decision to take a hiatus from painting for a while. The whole experience was a great stage of growth for my creative soul, and I hope it one day stands as an example to other artists, that if you have a vision, just go do it and spare no expense, and no excuse.

The Conductor has depicted your experience of the eternal artistic struggle, but how has this creative journey been for you, as the creator?

It was wonderful to approach a new idea like a brainless baby with gusto. The drive, desire, and some strong solutions in composition, color, and other ideas were already instilled within me, but there was much that was missing. I knew that to just go headlong into a project without any research would have been fruitless if not simply disappointing. For the months before hand, I had been immersing myself in the visual language of the filmmaking greats, most of which can be found in the books the directors wrote, the Criterion Collection, and in other lesser known first films and experiments of the already well known. It’s good to see evidence of where a strong director started so you can see what stuck and what didn’t, their struggles and trials. So along with watching almost every film by my favorite old directors, as well as much of the behind the scenes, was the research I had to do as a new student of filmmaking (like reading about an old master painter’s personal struggles, which for most, don’t exist, but you know Michelangelo or Di Vinci and the like got angry and depressed as well, since it’s a staple vegetable in the artistic diet!).

These days many artists lack enough understanding of the artistic forms which came before them and the artwork feels flimsy, but there is a scent that comes from knowledge, and it spills forth with olfactory glory from artistic creations built of knowledge and self-honesty. So the struggle to me, felt like the good ole’ days of being a student, with a new medium ahead of me to disassemble and recompose in my own way, while late night studies invigorated the mind and drove my work ethic near breaking.

The classical music chosen for The Conductor has been accompanying you over the past several years, as you’ve been creating the majority of your paintings. Given the nature of the film, incorporating your personal soundtrack makes sense – however, did any of the songs themselves directly trigger ideas or concepts for scenes in The Conductor?

Much of the time I paint, I’m surrounded by music. When I’m in need of coercing myself into a mood which reflects what I am about to paint, I have to find the right environment in my head, and there’s no better way to fill a silent studio with inspiring atmosphere than with the right choice in music, and there are a gazillion different soundtracks to do so. So naturally, the visions I’d see when listening to songs I’ve heard over 2000 times (thank you, play count) were easily found in the imagery I shot while filming for the movie. However, one of the biggest failures in the film is the lack of a solid plan or script, or production calendar or even a full story (this can also be seen as one of its biggest internally freeing successes, having to mould the film from nothing, as opposed to the deadly designs of following a script and plot from start to finish.)

Creating a film is an organic experience, and what the end result is has a life of its own far different than when it started, and having to accept that is a freeing notion. So when sitting down for two weeks, 14 hours a day, in a dark studio in my underwear, editing the complete film from start to finish neither the imagery, nor the soundtrack held more importance. Sometimes the imagery would determine the soundtrack, other times, the soundtrack would determine the imagery, and this was done on purpose to show how important BOTH of those things were. As some of the issues with the film become apparent, such as the oversaturation of music, and perhaps a lack of cohesiveness to some moments, or even an overdoing of certain movements and scenes, it still remains to me to be in the direction of where I would love to go with filmmaking. I’ve noticed only in hindsight how rapt people have been in the film, and yet there is practically no dialogue for much of the film. That means that the imagery and the music transported people into my world and I could dance with them for a while and hopefully leave them with some thoughts to piddle over in the following days, much like a definition of a painting. If I inspired them, I did so with images and music alone without having to literalize a story for them. And like a painting, I hope it to be wonderfully revealing by its nature, but subtle and vague in its content that the mind wanders and ponders.

You worked with Nadezda to create the film; do you or would you create many painting collaborations with fellow artists?

I always love posing the question to my fellow artists, not because I have an answer, but because the debate is stimulating; which lifestyle would yield the best art: A life alone and secluded to develop wholly outside an external realm of influence, or a life consistently surrounded by other creative individuals and their influence?

When I had my graduating BFA show, the four artists in the show created four different posters where each artist worked on every poster. To this day, I think those little 11 x 17 posters were the best things on the wall from any of us. A piece of art created by the melding of all four of our minds, we loved them! I live and create mostly alone these days because there’s nothing more deadly than creative differences effecting the final product detrimentally, and also the relationships. Even my aversion to anything involved with social media is purpose driven to remove outside influence forced upon my spirit, to find my own ways. This was definitely another reason for why I wanted to create the film entirely on my own; full, unhindered, creative freedom. I’m incredibly, perhaps to a fault, demanding of myself, and so too, to others. And we don’t need another asshole director yelling at the crew cause they’re not fast enough, it’s not evil enough, “Why are you out of character?” “Who needs this fucking sleep shit!?”

This is why the workshops I do are so damn intensive, I’m not here to piddle with paint for people to be all googly eyed over, there’s more to it than that. So I’ve come to realize, that if I’m going to exist in a more cinema-centric artistic life, I’m going to need to figure out how to work with people while remaining unwavering in my ideals and ethics. Not easy, but the artistic life is one wrought with internal struggle, and what a beautiful thing to face your faults and inabilities and come out on top without anyone’s help. It’s a very internally rewarding struggle… mostly struggle… but I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

Film, music, painting; how do you find these creative elements feed the soul?

Art feeds the soul. Lives without art find themselves missing a special part of the human nature. As science and mathematics exist to better understand our physical world and therefore help us function within it better, so too does art exist to better understand us as people, and therefore to help us better communicate amongst each other and the world we live in. I believe it has lost much of its importance in these modern days, no longer seen as this important guiding element to the soul, in the same way that advancements in science have consistently and repeatedly gone unnoticed until hindsight reveals its necessity, especially when some of the most favoured and attention garnering events in our time have to do with reality TV, disastrous situations, or illminded people. I fully believe that there is a language hidden within the soul of art that makes men and women better individuals, and therefore better to each other, for they understand and feel more deeply.

That is why I will continue to be an artist for the rest of my life until the day of my death, because that is the world I wish to live in and it is one in which, alone, I can dance with eternally.

Many artists feel that the process of art is an integral outlet. Do you feel that art has helped you to keep sane, or (as I re-live the struggle you depict in The Conductor,) is art an element towards losing your sanity?

It does seem funny how a tag for many artists, current and past, has been insanity, outsider, crazy, “an odd character,” depressed… and somehow also coupled with wise, necessary, brilliant, genius (usually only later, and usually after they die, right?). But this is how that mass mob mentality of the people mentioned above, view the real artists. Not the craftsmen, the artists.  And in as much, the same way, as once upon a time, anyone who posited that the earth went around the sun, was as much insane as those idiots who thought the earth was round! Lunatics! Yet time exposes and clarifies, and in hindsight we turn back and place the creations of those “mentally disturbed” artists on the walls within megalithic museums for the population, and in essence to preserve for the future populations, the knowledge, beauty, misery, emotion, and wisdom that these artists fully understood, though they may have lived their life always screaming in silence at the end of a nightmare.

Where do you hope that your path as an artist will take you in the future?

Several years ago, while on a journey through Italy, I went to visit an old monastery for sale in a small town. This was right after the closing of the Safehouse due to one of those garbage SF hipster landlords who ruined a beautiful thing. The monastery was perhaps the most perfect vision of the future for me, and I could see the dream we had at the Safehouse continuing with better direction there in those long halls of multiple studios, grand empty dining rooms of stone, and the courtyards of discussions. The ideal of the Safehouse Studios was that they ran themselves financially by the dedication of the selected tenants, and its position as a non-profit entity. Carl Dobsky ran the Safehouse Atelier as a major center for classical and digital training simply beyond the abilities of any university or college could do. The shows we had there, I think 7 or 8 in total, went from about 50 attendees, to over 500, and nothing was changed about how it was promoted, it spread by word of quality. The artwork was selected by artists, and therefore had an undeniable strength behind them, and being a non-profit, there was no need to suffer terrible decisions in artistic curation to appeal to the pockets of collectors (both bill collectors and art collectors.) The artists who showed there received the unheard of amount of 80/20 commission, and many of the shows were done as a silent auction style, allowing the artists to not only make the amount they wanted, but the costs were low so that all levels of collectors felt welcome. Plans for a center of book publication was included in the working theory, as well as workshops, lectures, trips, and more. The idea of this cultural center would be a blossom for the art world which we tend to see falling apart and losing its ways these days, with more and more artists trying to sell their stuff online, and great galleries of respect closing their doors. It’s based on a theory of mine that I’ve already put into practice and had shown all the signs of success that would inspire me to do so again one day in the future.

Although I don’t have the funds, nor the energy, nor the time these days to pursue this with the same headstrong vigor, this is definitely something I would plan on doing, but not here, definitely in Europe somewhere, where by train you can travel vast differences in cultures in only a couple hours, something I think this country lacks. (don’t get me wrong, this place is great, what would we do without Amazon prime!?) but I need more stimulus in the world around me to feed the appetite for the output of art I wish to create.

And of course in the long run as an old scraggly bastard, I just want to meander the old world with a paint box, sketchbook, bottle of wine, some cheese and bread, my girl, perhaps a kitten, and focus on more writing and creating things that will outlive me, in the hopes to leave a mark on the world that’s not just another scar.