I’m working a personal development course in order to boost my self-esteem and to get a better handle on life. At the beginning of this course we were asked to choose our core-values and it took me a lot of mental effort to find the ones that mattered most. Just as I had problems with assigning “Love” as one of my core values due to the fact that I’ve seen (and been involved in) using “Love” to justify unethical and unhealthy relationships, I have problems with assigning a “positive mental attitude” to the list of things which I’m going to work on every day. Why would “positivity” piss me off??? It's a great thing, right?

I have seen positivity used as an excuse to treat people poorly when they are not “winning” at life. I have seen it used as a way to shut down connection when it was most needed; and replaced it with out-of-touch advice. I have seen positivity used to turn people into fake smiling shells of humans who look quite content, and talk the happy talk; and who get viciously angry if you don’t “buy in” to their selfish, self-focused, wealth-worshipping, whiteness-worshipping view of the universe. I’ve seen it incorporated into quack spirituality that cuts off and cauterizes every negative experience instead of learning from it. 

I think a lot of wounds actually need more of a bandage-and-hug approach; that is, acceptance and compassion. A wiser approach to healing  would involve: curiosity, humility, and questing for solutions. Maybe even a dive into the simple contemplation that every flower wants to grow and be beautiful, and be a part of the whole of nature; and so does every person. How does a damaged plant grow new branches and keep blooming despite the scar? How does a person grow when they’ve just lost a huge piece of themselves?

I’m talking about EVERY person. Whether they’re positive or not. Whether they’re “woke” or not. Whether they’re destroying their bodies with booze and drugs or drinking smoothies and jogging every day. Whether they’re fat or thin, light or dark, young or old, handsome or ordinary or disfigured by misfortune. Whether they read books or watch football. (Or both. I know there are some nerd sports fans out there, I see you.)

I’m writing this essay during the 2020 Corona pandemic. Homelessness is rampant in my homeland, tent-cities are sprouting up and growing in all the major cities of California. Meanwhile in my Facebook community there’s a war over who’s wearing a mask, and nobody is mentioning the glaring, obvious point; that droves of people are sleeping and pissing and shitting in the streets and that this situation endangers everybody in our society. That is EXACTLY the set of conditions which grows uncontrollable plagues and make the mask-wearing practically meaningless. Every time I see a super-thin, tan, mask-wearing “woke” lady who talks the good talk, I see crouching behind her hundreds of homeless people who are doing without so that her husband can have a higher salary and better stock options. His company rapes the Earth and exploits the people for a bit of cash. His company is now marketing how environmentally aware they are, because all the “positive” people want to FEEL like they are compassionate and responsible without having to do any work towards change.

Well… I'm not going to solve the problems of the world by complaining, so… I turn my focus back to someone who also needs help; myself. I was able to work around the “Love” conundrum while setting my core values, (since I do want to be more loving) by modifying the value so that the love of self, others, and nature happen simultaneously and with equal or near-equal weight on the three focuses in order to be healthy for me. Unhealthy love has caused me a lot of misery and pain. I’m not going to continue valuing “love” without some qualifications.

I’m looking for a way to frame positivity that is not So. Damn. Selfish. And I need to find it because positivity is a tool which can help me grow my being, my business, my community, my species into a healthier whole. Negative self-talk has stolen so much energy from me over the years and has stifled so much of my work. But I am NOT interested in a Rich Person’s Positivity. I am interested in developing an ACTIVIST positivity.

Awareness needs to be a foundation for my outlook on life. Connection between myself, others, and nature needs to remain a higher priority for me than whether I’m “doing well”. But when I work on awareness it instantly brings pain, so, it's not an easy discipline to cultivate.  I know that I'm young enough that my elders can rightfully laugh and say, “what do you know about pain, girl?” 

Well, as I reflect on what it's going to take in order for me to achieve more success as a musician, it's extremely painful. I chose a profession which everybody claims to admire but which everybody wants to experience as cheaply as possible. People are far more concerned with whether their Spotify stream gives them a good lift during their workouts than with wondering, “hey, are the people who distribute this music exploiting and abusing the people who play it?” The answer with Spotify and the rest of the music industry is: yes, they are abusing and exploiting the people who make the music. Doing so gives better stock options to the executives and allows for bigger advertising budgets. If the groove is good, the people listen. The musicians themselves buy into the abuse. What choice do we have? We either buy in to that system or for all intents and purposes, we don't exist.

I took up the life of a street performer and it’s good; but the reality of being a street performer in the United States is that one injury can throw you down to the panhandler’s corner of the sidewalk. I may end up disfigured, broken, spat-on, working my gratitude and spirituality every morning from under a freeway overpass. “I’m grateful for my poverty because no one wants to own anything that belongs to me.” So you see… part of my positivity, out of sheer self-preservation, out of honesty, out of awareness, needs to lift up the panhandler instead of spitting on her. She is me and I am her. I’m terrified of being her. A lot of Germans laugh when they find out I'm from California. “Why did you move here??” they ask incredulously. And then I describe to them the benefits of their own system of Democratic Socialism. In that system, everybody is worthy of dignity and the right to basic living conditions. 

For me, becoming an artist always invoked a kind of existential terror that I will never know what it’s like to feel safe and secure. At the same time, I’d better act as though I’m a floating butterfly of light, the people who hire bands for gigs are hiring us for a service-industry position so, keep smiling! A musician's discipline is to make parties and events feel fabulous. The realities of life might be turning me into a nervous wreck or keeping me in abusive relationships in order to survive, but I’ve developed an ability to act like it’s all cool and that I have the best job in the world. (I mean, on a good day, I DO have the best job in the world.)

Positivity without awareness and a sense of responsibility is a sham, a lie produced by other freelance servants to the wealthy. I reject it with all my being. I don’t want to sit around feeling negative, but I do want to sit around quietly, just being, without needing to be any better than I am in this moment. I want to feel more aware, loving, grateful, and open to positive opportunities, without the element of gambling which comes with Rich People Positivity. I don’t want to feel better if I win and worse if I lose. I want to feel secure in the knowledge that this positivity-training isn’t just for my own sake, and it’s DEFINITELY NOT for accumulating wealth and improving my looks. This should be a work I add to my day so that I can bring hope, joy, and value into my life and to the lives of others. I work on my positivity training so that I can call out to my human family with every song I play: there’s raw, living beauty in this world, dear family. It’s being destroyed and replaced by cheap imitations because our institutions are ruled by people who worship wealth and success. They shrug off the misery they create in this world because the ugliness of the poor makes those people worthless. Don’t worry, dear artist, you still have a nice instrument and good looks so we don’t hate YOU even though you might be homeless in a month, and ugly in a few years. Play now, make us feel good!

Awareness is worth developing as part of my daily practice, even though, with every layer of false beauty I lift from my eyes, more and more suffering is revealed through the fabric. Positivity is not something I practice with the goal of becoming more rich and famous, but rather with the goal of moving towards being more present, calm, grateful and empowered. 

There are certain things I want to ask positivity to do for me; and certain things I never want to ask it to achieve. If you’re selling your positivity along with blindness and wealth-worship, you can shove it up your latté, buddy. My positivity is linked with awareness, acceptance, compassion, and spiritual growth. I’m not any better than you because of it. I’m just me, healing my scars, growing new branches because too much of my old self died. I’m hoping for new flowers, meanwhile it’s the bark and the roots and the leaf buds that need the energy. Focusing too much on the flowers has left me feeling like I’m worthless and too sick to bloom.