on my latest creation

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When I first moved to New York, I lived in a communal house with nine other people. A few days in, a roommate asked me what it felt like to walk into a room the way I did. I didn’t know what he meant. “This confidence, this assurance,” he said.

I was reminded of this at dinner a few nights ago when I walked in to meet a friend. He immediately said, “If I could only have your confidence.” I hadn’t said a single word. In fact, I had spent the walk to the restaurant thinking about my upcoming birthday and how it made me miss the parties my parents used to throw for me. Internally, "confident" wouldn’t have made the list of how I was feeling.

This is the irony. Grappling with how I appear versus how I feel has been strange. How do I come to understand something I never intentionally created?

And then I keep singing, investing, creating, and marketing myself. I think about my career and how I’ve pushed through doubt, failure, and silence. I realize this confidence, this assurance, needs space to roam, even when I’m not performing. Something this powerful can’t just rest—or at least, it doesn’t seem to.

I wrote this on the R train. I’m calling it Be Something. Album three, maybe?

“As an infant, I cried incessantly

Grappling with the sentiment that echoed through me

It was tragically piercing and sweepingly stunning

Feeling the hum of ‘be something’

Raised to be kind and fair with pride

I dabbled in cruelty on the playground at five

Seeking a win for the words in my skin

I stole her toy to be something

So I led, I begged, I read all the books in the room

Attempting to understand what this hum wanted me to do

At ten the words grew deafeningly loud

Until I picked up a pen and wrote my stories down

Watch me try to paint a different scape

I’ll crash into glass every time

And all of the shards will shape themselves into arrows

That lead to a spiral towards the sky

I’m not a lady of religion

But I say this with faith in every realm

If I was brought here as a vessel for a vision

I will be something and have something to tell”

What’s your latest creation?

Me, slightly older than an infant, with the birthday-planner extraordinaire herself.