Stepping through a portal of creative rebirth
Since the end of last year, an energy of change began blowing into my life.
I sought a way of being and working that had the potential to encompass all of the joy, beauty, questions, struggles, transformations, and reflections on my place in the world.
Living through unprecedented times, I’ve felt that the past four years have been like four lifetimes compressed into one very small window. These times have asked me to cultivate my resiliency, lean into my spiritual life, and embrace my shapeshifter archetype.
My creative business launched in October 2021 and held me through two years of independence, but it could no longer contain the new growth that was budding. My performance and art-making world was also experiencing a reckoning, and it had long been without solid ground to root into. Like a plant that had outgrown its pot, I was expanding beyond what my present world held space for.
I was expanding into something I couldn’t yet see, reaching into the vastness, stretching towards a future vision for myself and in turn, a future vision for the world, for my communities, and those I love.
Becoming the catalyst
As a performance artist, my work often begins in an exploration of a question. Usually a question that is existential in nature. It is from the exploration of liminal space – the in-between – that answers and pathways I seek can be uncovered. In a process of self-inquiry, divination, and practical questions, I am able to immerse myself in other timelines, realities, and visions for what might come to pass.
In February, I had the opportunity to present a new original work entitled The Lone Flamingo, a performance autobiography of solitude and spiritual transformation. This piece was first conceptualized during a performance workshop facilitated by La Pocha Nostra. Every year since 2016 (with the exception of 2020-2021) I have attended their summer intensive live art lab. And each time, I have witnessed my expansion as a creative being, a human being, and a spiritual being.
A seed was planted that week last summer, and it became the fruit that sustained me into this moment. The Lone Flamingo became a metaphor for my life. And it became a vessel for finding the exact thing that I felt I was missing.
A couple of weeks after that workshop, I submitted an outline of the piece to OUTsider Festival on the night of the deadline. And in August I received an acceptance letter. A letter I didn’t think I would ever get.
In my brief project synopsis, I describe the relevance of the flamingo – “A representation of self-expression & flamboyance, a symbol of queerness, an animal generally known to remain with its flock – the flamingo is the archetype of this strange creature far from their ‘place’, in constant molting transit(ion) to find something like home. The Lone Flamingo is a ritual of synchronicity, the closing of a cycle, a metaphorical death, and a psychomagic resurrection.”
This performance held the ingredients and the fuel for my transformation. The themes I explored – symbolic death, rebirth, shadow work, multiplicity – were not mere concepts to muse on. I recognized early in the process that I was experiencing this symbolism as a lived experience, and I was entering a portal that would magnify every single thought and feeling.
The synchronicites made themselves apparent. Threads and mirrors and prisms that led me through time, forward and backward. I was guided to moments and memories that were making known their readiness to be healed. As the performance drew closer, the quiet yet omnipresent energy of transition and remembrance provided more questions than answers.
Trusting in divine timing and cosmic wisdom
Back in January, when Pluto made its transit from Capricorn to Aquarius, everything began to multiply. I was tested in ways I never saw coming. With great gusts, like the winds of a hurricane, lessons came rushing in to clear that which no longer served me. The 16-year window of the Pluto-Capricorn transit coming to a close led me to reflect on the formative years of my adulthood, from age 19 to the present. Pluto, the planet of transformation and renewal, found its moment to illuminate a truth in my life – I was boxing myself in.
Despite all of my radical beliefs and ways of being, I was still internalizing the message that I had to “follow the rules”, even if those rules were obscure, antiquated, or nonsensical.
Through all of this, I felt a wide gap between how I had been showing up and where my trajectory was pointing me. I knew something completely new was surfacing, but I did not have the words. I knew it was asking something of me that would require a combination of acceptance and letting go.
The growth of my creative business was in a holding pattern, and it needed an infusion of life to continue. In client projects, my process and methodology were rising, alchemizing. I started to see it like a brain, rebuilding the synapses and neural pathways. I made small steps to stay present in this vision, to honor my process while throwing the bulk of my energy into my upcoming performance.
It has felt like a rare occurrence in my life, to have an experience that is so completely affirming that I come away with the feeling that the entire axis of my life has shifted for the better.
To be on the precipice of utter confusion, and trust that I can and should take that step forward into the dark, a step toward the chance of falling off the edge, a step into that which is not guaranteed… that has been a major test that this year wants me to experience.
Following the performance in February, I rode the high of the afterglow and deep love I felt in community with so many creative, radical queer people and the energy I received from witnessing a long weekend of thought-provoking performance art. And… I spiraled. I was thrust back into the clunky mechanisms I had been using to navigate capitalist and colonial systems, and it became even more apparent that things were not in alignment. The experience of those 4 days, creating and sharing space, made it even more clear to me how disconnected I felt from community.
Activating my voice
As April arrived, things felt like they were disintegrating. It almost seemed that my life was under a magnifying glass, beaming hot sun shining through to scorch everything beneath it. Anything that was not rooted into a deeper part of myself was burned away, leaving only ash. Yet, ash is a fertilizer. Growing up cultivating a garden, I knew the power of ash to provide nutrients and repel invasive bugs that might eat budding plants.
I made a decision to take a bus from my home base in Guadalajara to Mazátlan, to see the full solar eclipse on April 8th. This decision came at a moment of turmoil, and while my rational mind was pretty sure this made no sense, some other part of me said that I needed to shatter my reality and allow something else in.
Despite being between gigs, and having just enough money to make the trip, I did it. I made a choice to listen to that ephemeral voice. A voice that offered a kind of wisdom that exists beyond what the rational mind can comprehend. That voice was in some ways my own, in some ways the voice of the collective, and in some ways the voice of the unseen. And it guided me to a reset button – a psychomagic action that opened a door I wouldn’t have seen or opened, had I allowed myself to stay where I was.
What unfolded after returning from that trip has become the foundation of what I now see as my commitment to myself and the world in this lifetime.
What I can only describe as a week-long inner journey, a download from the universe came to me. I have never quite felt a flow of words and writing like this, consistently coming each day, committed to guiding me to clarity. I was guided to the work of other world builders and cosmic stewards, such as Kening Zhu and Ayana Zaire Cotton, and to other resources that fed this expanding vision.
2 weeks later, I shared the first iteration of my manifesto with a small number of trusted folks. And now, less than 2 months after the faucet was turned all the way on, I built version 1.0 of my new digital world. I’ll admit that this was one of the shortest turnarounds I’ve ever done, and I won’t pretend that it was totally realistic. Yet even in that process, I found answers that have been woven into the framework.
What is yet to come
I have always desired to reach beyond what can be plainly seen.
I have felt the yearning to show up fully and authentically as a creative professional. To be all versions of myself at any given time. To position myself in proximity to humans who share desires to build worlds centered on love and possibility. How to convey that in copywriting, in visuals, in a website, even in real life… it has not always been clear to me. And I realize a great deal of that came from the ways I have compartmentalized my being.
This space is in its early imaginal state. I see it as a young solar system, emerging from a nebulous cloud, surging with new energy, and also still finding its particular frequency. With the thoughtful feedback of a few wise folks in my network, I feel that I have captured the essence of how I approach art, life, and creativity.
It is becoming unmistakably clear that authenticity and spiritual attunement will the be force that opens doors and builds new worlds for our collective future. It will be the force that breaks down the walls inside of us and rejoins our interior worlds. More than that, in believing that those worlds can be rejoined, we can be living answers to our own existential questions.
What this online space is – a world-building and design studio for the next era of the internet. An incubator for sprouting seeds, transplanting, pruning, fertilizing, grafting, harvesting, and composting. A home for my creative work with a root system that will reach far beyond the surface. An archive of personal reflection and creative exploration. A pulsating orb of energy that rises and rests with its own natural cycles. A way of being that opens up the floodgates of your inner magic. A place for my outward-facing creative offerings and my inward-facing creative examinations. A world that is uniquely mine, and equally yours too. And a prism refracting light into exactly the frequency we need to find our way.
As this space expands, and as I lean further into my future vision, I deeply appreciate the opportunity to receive. I welcome connection from any who feel that inkling to reach out, to ask questions, and to share your reflections.