The Plight & Forgiveness of Long-distance/International Situationships
Francis Okezie | June 30 2026
My hate-love relationship with kissing through the phone
People are already uneasy about the humming sensation from always-on buzzing devices to AI accessories designed to capture & process your emotions, how do you feel knowing that might be you as an online dater? Life as we know it has evolved to such technological schemes, affecting the way we view and interact with each other. Like bots, phishing emails and window-cleaner calls, you can become noise in someone’s phone. That’s not the case all the time but I share that metaphor so you can perceive online dating figuratively and understand the trade offs of self when pursuing romance in the digital space.
A preface to this digital sphere is its shallowness; it can only reward speed over depth and production over thought₁. That said we have to accept this mode and how it consolidates dating in 2026. We’re talking about long distance/international situationships, but how far is too far? With tech, socials and speedy response loops, we are the most connected we’ve ever been, and this presents multiple variables in how we interact. We believe that everyone is a ping away which isn’t necessarily fair to them and ourselves. Similar to my previous article, we have the opportunity to disassemble dating and how popular media absorb and distribute these ideals. Anecdotally, I’ll air my dirty laundry and attempt to pinpoint the noisiness/confusion of establishing a romantic connection through the digital sphere.
When navigating long-distance & international exchanges sustained by current technology, the hardships require an abundance of grace with yourself while walking through this forest; It’s weird, confusing and sometimes cyber-sexualized. With the times we’re living in, long distance dating is more IN than it’s ever been! It’s the reason why your local baddie is stressed over a guy in London or Lagos. This is a new norm we’re grappling with.
And we must adapt with it.
I use situationships as an ultra-umbrella term for every relationship hosted and sustained on digital platforms. Every relationship in this sphere grants applicability to a situationship. But what is the situation? It's every variable that prevents the idealistic establishment of a couple: I believe it’s the distance, finances, emotional unavailability or simply one-sidedness in romantic interactions.
Even traditional relationships have situational drawbacks that qualify for a situationship. I think if you’re in a relationship that’s far away, in different time zones, and you’re working meticulously with each other constantly - those are situational cards that you now navigate for the health of your relationship. So many situations, so little pragmatic solutions. Situationships conventionally operate like multiple tabs opening in a window, they begin to blur as you click tab to tab, trying to find the relevant one, or the one you feel like addressing finally.
“Why haven’t they texted me back? Why haven’t they called me?”
In previous lifetimes proximity was the golden ticket in determining if someone was as into you as you think. When connection was more tangible your progression would be measured by how many dates you went on or how embedded you are in their routine. With the distance, how are you supposed to fit a slot? The natural formula in calculating how serious things were becoming was also through a friend asking when’s that last time you saw them?; this would proceed the unraveling of your romantic connection. But now, you enter the purgatory of omnipresence₂.
You’re there, but you never necessarily leave.
This correlates with the expectation & illusion of availability. SpizMack perfectly explains this situation on Reddit:
It’s a relatively (Very) new phenomenon that basically anyone in your life gets access to you at all times. It was only 20 years ago that if you left the house for the day you were actually gone. You’d return to messages when you come back hours or even days later.
This is a common plight of long distant/international relationships, trying to converge the digital and tangible sphere for connection. Yes, I’m free, but I’ll have to corner myself at a friend's dinner so I can briefly hear about how your day went. With time and impatience your existence becomes an imposition to their life and you accidentally bud into moments, not having the context on when the right time is. And if they do respond to the call and tell you now isn’t the right time, you’re still hurt. This experience is reflexive(only because it takes two to tango) which brings me to an adamant position on forgiveness.
But only seems to work when it's on your time
And I'm on your mind
Talking for 9 months on and off, we tried to sustain something digitally. From the start I was infatuated and I wanted to see it through. We laughed, argued, shared life stories and imagined a future together. With the distance and the grind it became more difficult to hear from each other. The biggest caveat was the supplementation of love languages from five to four, without physicality it was necessary to maximize acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time and gift-giving to make up for the deficit. With Physicality, I point towards the relation of the body in the pursuit of love and how you communicate with it physiologically. I believe that physicality is crucial in learning about the person you want to be with. It helps with decoding the subliminal language that you don’t acknowledge, trivial things can be assessed and understood just by gazing into someone’s eyes in the same room.
Body language contributes so much to learning for the pursuit of romantic connection. I thought their language was profane at first, I caught myself reading between discouraging lines but with time I was able to understand their intent—still—the distance made that process longer and overcomplicated. Even when it came to grievances we didn’t have the operative tools to console one another, and it wasn’t anyone one’s fault because we couldn't quite understand each other.
Weeks went by, and I hadn’t heard from them because they were on tour, the only time we exchanged was when they asked if I blocked on socials - which I didn’t yet. Close to a month went by and radio silence. I muted them to save myself from observing their absence, then when I had the courage to view their story—it was a video of them bouncing in a trampoline park. I was comically devastated.
We eventually cut off ties completely, I blocked them so I could get over the situation. In doing so, I communicated a detrimental social action, which no matter how much I explained my choice in retrospect, it would determine the end of the situation(ship). Considering it was only social media, I never viewed this action as a total ex-communication—they had my number afterall.
Fast forward to last week, I ran into them at a party in Paris.
I froze. I walked through the courtyard where I observed their silhouette in its entirety to where I couldn't grasp that it was actually them. It’d been over a year since I saw them in flesh and I was stunned. I glanced over and confirmed what I knew, and with the next glance—they were gone.
It took some processing but I could say it was finally over. We exchanged no more than four ‘texts’ just for confirmation and housekeeping purposes. But it was finalized. I was so hurt but it almost rejuvenated me. It actually made me feel alive. It’s natural to perceieve this masochistically, but the heartbreak reminded me of how much I cared frfr. And the feeling isn’t something I could command away, I’ve semantically decided to move on but I have to grant my body the time to do so too.
Since I’ve been able to start healing and becoming. My omnipresent sentence was served and I got the answers I couldn’t get through those digital bars. I would always be too scared to ask or clarify. This brings me to conclusion in regards to the whole situation and both sides navigating connections through the digital sphere - It’s not easy. And it requires a lot of forgiveness in oneself trying to initiate, sustain, and accomplish dating in the accessible, connective and contemporary—but complicated—world.
It takes a muscle to fall in love. It takes serious exercise and endurance training - especially long distance. But this training is not solely on how heavy your weights are but the technique you use to instrument these muscles. Something this situation(ship) taught me was advocacy, grace and forgiveness. It encouraged me to say the quiet parts out loud instead of letting it fester and manifest to something monstrous. It made me understand how constant access overcomplicates care and attention. It made me consider more intentional techniques in community in the digital sphere. It also taught me how learning and loving often blend in to the same entity to establish a romantic connection.
This situation(ship) made me acknowledge the triumph of forgiveness, in the things you can and cannot control. With our love languages, life stories, goals, the present world, capitalism, social dynamics, youth and the grind congealed with the current digital age and its ramifications —it was never going to work. But I was honoured to try. Thanks to M.I.A, I understand it takes muscle to put yourself forward in the pursuit of love. But when you’re done bodybuilding, it will be something to flex.
Times are worse than sad
And the world is falling on your head
Just remember that for all you know
Good or bad, come what may
You're gonna live tomorrow if you don't die today
References₁ Omonijo, S. (n.d.). What is the most valuable kind of data in the age of AI? Substack. https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/what-is-the-most-valuable-kind-of₂ Omondi, O. (2017, January 3). Digital intimacy. Medium. https://medium.com/@omondiochuka/digital-intimacy-35759176ec94
Drake is not interested in homemaking anytime soon
Francis Okezie | May 17 2026
In the auto-exposée, Drake’s Maid of Honour explores online courting, love optimization, debauchery, affluence and unveils the world of being one of his many encounters
I like this Drake album because it specifically exposes his world and how synonymous it is to how online/pop culture grasp dating in 2026. Dating is idealized to seem luxurious, vain, monetized, love/sex optimized, self indulgent and fasttttttttt. The project reveals his stance around nuclear relationships, fidelity, sex and the transaction/war of being one of his escapades. This is a think-commentary-piece and album review of “Maid of Honour”, the best of the three albums released on May 15. If you’ve listened or don’t plan on it I hope reading this encourages you to think of the dating schemes of the 2020s and how you can personally reconfigure it for your clarity.
Hoe phase is an introspective introduction to this album, and knowing Drake's usual subject matter, it’s expected. This song is almost the founding premise of this album, which complicates the cover of the album. I’m interested to understand what motif Drake is trying to signal having a picture of his mom overlayed with him & his dad. Unrelated, I know their parents were married but I wonder who the maid of honour is in this lens; is it the woman Drake entertains? Are they acting as placeholders for his potential wife? Regardless, the song is a non-attachment party track, it’s encouraging hot girl summer practices but notes where Drake stands on courtship currently. Either way, the fergalicious sampled track is a fun and self-explanatory introduction to the album
Outside Tweaking might be my favourite song from this album, it’s strangely dark which reminds me of Hey Ya’s lyric, “Y'all don't wanna hear me, you just wanna dance” in it’s dramatic irony. The production starts with this eery drum beat, and looped vocals pitched upwards, followed by an atomspheric & melancholy plateau. The footwork in the second half of the song was fresh and the feature almost makes it unpredictable; Stunna Sandy is like Ice Spice’s daughter in stan twitter terms; in the Bikini Bottom universe Ice would be Spongebob and Stunna would be DoobleBob.
In this track he sets the tone of the album and the women he encounters are never looking for anything binding from him and provides an itinerary of their experience. He provides the framework but also acknowledges the transaction.
[Verse 1: Drake]
All of these OnlyFans models on the 'Gram
If I slide in the DM and I try and just talk to you
Then I would just be a fan
Just performed for twenty thousand fans
Now she want twenty thousand bands
…
This is Drake essentially identifying the woman he’s attempted to court and the prices they quote even though he’s a multi-million dollar selling artist. His esteem is still not enough for these women he engages with, which confirms that their relationship is still transactional. In this case of the money, it’s something these women can leverage post-relation. Afterall, Drake is known to allot NDAs so they wouldn't be able to publicize their interaction with the star.
…
I was sayin' we should get some sun
I was thinkin' beaches with the sand
Askin' if your manager could come
It seem like your manager's your man
Still, Drake compromises because he is devoted to seeing her. Chances are he’s not in the city or country as this woman and this models the popular strife of a long distance/international relations, except he has the financial means to see her. He proposed a Baecation type of date(potentially in his frequented getaway, Turks & Caicos). To the women, their interaction with Drake is still something wrapped in business, wanting to be accompanied by a supervisor who he is skeptical is entangled with the girl he’s trying to bag. There’s a possibility he isn’t wrong, his skepticism is a marker of fear he has when pursuing these off-shore women—he might be playing for a Baecation he’s uninvolved in.
Stunna Sandy is positioned as the woman being courted by Drake.
[Verse 2: Stunna Sandy]
He don't love me, I don't love him either
Yeah, all these other bitches get procedures
And if you book me the flight
I could be there by the weekend
Let me know what time I be leavin'
We could be outside tweakin'
[Chorus: Drake & Stunna Sandy, Drake, Stunna Sandy]
We could be outside tweakin'
We could be outside tweakin'
She acts as a relayer of what the women in Drake’s life feel, reaffirming that their relationship is transactional; it’s understood they don’t love each other and their interaction is monetized(now experientially). There’s two reasons why they’re both meeting and it’s adventurous, fleeting, fun and sex-derived. This is a popular accepted scheme of being flewed out, an idiom coined by Yung Miami, rapper in the ex-duo—City Girls. In this verse, Stunna(voicing these women) attempts to distinguish themselves from the Onlyfans women Drake DMs that charge him, and instead are obliged to a getaway adventure where their time together is proctored by their flight back home. With this track we understand the type of women, timeframe and experiences Drake searches after. With such a quick turnaround rate for each encounter, optimally we could infer him affording 104 encounters a year.
Cheetah Print is a fun song, Peggy Gou’s “Na Na Na” feature paired with the electro robot effects sparks feelings of the summer and leisure; it’s a party immediately and the song is half-enjoyable. Lyrically it’s an extension of Hoe-phase and Outside Tweaking; Cheetah Print is a detailed descriptor of what Drakes like to do; this song acts as a corridor of the house he’s building—it’s nowhere near a home however. I like the first half, but overall the song is just Greedy. Peggy's sample with the cha cha slide is just excessive, messy and too grattifying- similar to his dating lifestyle. Similarly, Amazing Shape & BBW channel this ever-growing line, I prefer these tracks to the ode’s it gives to his albums Controlla and More Life. We get more details about the sensations, shapes and trajectory of Drake’s dating and how it will potentially people’s roles & sentiment around dating.
9 songs invested into the 14 track album, Maid of Honour subversively captures the idealistic dating and courting processes of the 2020s. I’m expanding this point of view using Drake as a marker of the phenomenon, with anecdotal exposure to hip-hop music, influencers, clubbing culture, online dating, and social media conversations & content around dating, I mark this dating formula as an emerging occurrence; there is a prevalence in discourse directed around the roles of nuclear union, and similar to traditionalist life-prose around relationships, this a new formula that reconfigures the social discourse and behaviours positions, widening the grasp and cues of dating in 2026.
This brings me to the Where’s your stuff interlude, and how Drake positions himself to his age-mates.
[Interlude]
And then my thing is with these married bitches
You livin' the wife life, where your clothes at? Where your pieces at?
Where your bags at? Where the trips is at? Where the cars at?
I'm sorry, did you get a push gift?
Where your Porsche at? Where your Benz at?
Like, what's so tea about being married to a bum, huh?
Wife life, where your Lulu at, ma?
Where your pilates class at, ma? Like Jеalous?
Your birthday, where he took you for your birthday? Nowhеre
Goodbye, bunch of— bitch, please
Voiced and pulled from @youfoundivy on Tiktok, Drake uses this to reaffirm his position in his dating schemes, targeting this interlude supposedly to married women and indirectly - married men. The interlude smugly positions being married without an elaborate income and multiple perks as stupid and reductive - more importantly -we understand how Drake positions relationships and homemaking nuclearly. I’ve seen women resourcing the sound for their own Tiktok so its context further blurs; I struggle to invest in this take because it materializes the labour of marriage and adapts the outlook he has around dating into the lens of marriage. “Where’s your Peices at? Where’s your Porche at, Where’s your Pilates class ma?” now functions as a success marker of marriages - whether you like or not - the implication is to get married to get Louis bags, vacations, and Pilate appointments. This rhetoric is dangerous because it further the transactional mode of dating by gender where men will pay their way through courting and women should monetize themselves to determine whether those they date are worthy.
This makes me ask more questions about the symbolism of his parents and him as the cover in alludence to this interlude and the title of the project? Genuinely, how can all of these sentiments coincide?
To not further bombard you with everything I think about this album, I’m stratifying my list of favourites and it goes as follows: Outside Tweaking, first ½ of Cheetah Print, New Bestie , Amazing Shape, and Q&A.
Drake's world is already alluring. I know 2 women with a history w/Drake and they’re very diplomatic when recalling those times in their lives. The argument I form is that Drake’s scheme of dating can't be sustainably modelled. Your flights to Turks & Caicos may be weekends in Collingwood, and that’s totally fine. With the polarizing nature of the internet it can often fool you into thinking these are the standard modes of dating. I believe the power & gender dynamics wrapped about in popular music give us an opportunity to reconsider how we go about dating in the future. Analyzing the subject matter, Drake himself struggles to navigate this scheme he’s created & sustained the past 2 decades. With him as a main character of this phenomenon, this love-lifestyle is embraced, inspired, curated and desired by so many women and men currently*, and you have to investigate and understand the process of wanting these patterns in your dating schemes. Yes it can be fun, summery, spontaneous, glamorous, luxurious, and sexually enthusiastic — but will it ever be sustainable, even for someone like Drake who has the means to continue doingso? These are simply the forces of popular & exciting thought on social media, though this isn’t necessarily the default positioning of love embraced, it’s painted as an idealistic way of courting amongst my peers, even if you’re in love, popular media pervasively asks - Where’s your stuff at?
Drake. (2026). Maid of honour [Album]. OVO Sound.
Drake. (2026). Outside tweaking [Song]. On Maid of honour [Album]. OVO Sound.
Drake. (2026). Hoe phase [Song]. On Maid of honour [Album]. OVO Sound.
Drake. (2026). Where’s your stuff at? [Interlude]. On Maid of honour [Album]. OVO Sound.
Fuller, M., & Weizman, E. (2021). Investigative aesthetics: Conflicts and commons in the politics of truth. Verso.
Genius. (n.d.). Maid of honour by Drake [Album track list and lyrics]. Genius Media Group Inc. Retrieved May 16, 2026, from https://genius.com/albums/Drake/Maid-of-honour
Gen Zs/Alphas are reappropriating "Heroin Chic” beauty standards & techniques from 2000s
Francis Okezie & Nkinzi Kiminou | May 13 2026
For a generation plagued with nostalgia, we find ways to make “looksmaxxing” seem novel (especially for bros)
Since throwbacks are loved, pop culture is also loving the resurgence of ideas from the past decades. With the rise of Braden Peters, known online as Clavicular, as an influencer, certain traits reminiscent of the 2000s are being resuscitated, reversing into the skinny plague except this time they are geared towards males. In real time, we are witnessing the regression of the body positivity of the 2010s and the repackaging of self-help into aggressive and Frankenstein-ish body mutilations. Is it simply bodily augmentation? Perhaps they are social leveraging kits for the misguided. Either way, the situation also dilapidates the male mind into a femmephobic adaptation of poor body image.
Heroin chic, through fashion, influenced beauty and body standards of the 90s and the 2000s. It glamorized symptoms of drug abuse such as weight loss, malnutrition, and exhaustion. While Heroin chic has not returned, the parallel between it and the current trend of “looksmaxxing” is more than pertinent because of its subculture’s harmful practices and glorification of perfection. Thirty years later, the males of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha are seen reinforcing those beauty standards; androgynous looks are back, lean body types too, and they have also found themselves succumbing to substance abuse.
Clavicular’s male focus brigade is heavily akin to the body modifying culture that captivated and damaged so many young women from the 90s to the 2000s, millennial women are forever affected by the craze that was Heroin chic. The Heroin Chic movement was popularized by American supermodel Gia Crangi. This trend came at a time where heroin made a resurgence and became the drug of choice of Fashion and some notable subcultures like Grunge. Other personalities like Kate Moss and Courtney Love used Crangi’s signaling to push the movement into high profile spaces and campaigns. In 1993, for his perfume Obsession Calvin Klein created a campaign under the premise of this look. The campaign featured Kate Moss, which resulted in criticism from former US president Bill Clinton. He was quoted saying: “You do not need to glamourize addiction to sell clothes.”
Heroin Chic was a term used to describe one of the wanted looks of the mid-90s to early 2000s: flushed/pale-green skin, thinnest weight, sharp edges facially - similar to a heavy abuser of drugs. Coincidentally, to maintain this body, many models suffered from anorexia and heroin abuse. The same type of body dysmorphia remains and can be found in the current Alt-Right subculture like the “Looksmaxxing” movement.
This new craze is propagated by the manosphere finally breaking into mainstream forms of media. Looksmaxxing is defined by their official website as “the process of optimizing your physical appearance through strategies like skincare, grooming, fitness, and styling. It’s a structured approach to becoming more attractive, confident, and socially effective.” This process without the discretion for researchers includes: injections, bone hammering, fitness(occasionally peptides) and hard drugs.
These techniques are the direct result of pipelines created by Manosphere (and ultimately The Alt-Right) content funnels. Actors like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes positioned themselves to thrive and social media created a place for personalities like Clavicular to form their own subculture. Consequently, more incels are being instructed to seek these unrealistic body standards using dangerous and life-threatening techniques. Using strategic amplification systems on digital platforms, manosphere communities engage in networked harassment to discipline gender nonconformity and reassert patriarchal notions of self. This creates a ripple effect that influences the look and ideology of young men, steering them towards hyper-masculine looks in the pursuit of peaking male beauty and discouraging the embodiment of femininity.
Moreover, it extends the goalpost of unrealistic beauty standards to a male audience, endorsed by the manosphere. First it was Heroin chic - which was solely directed to women - now it is looksmaxxing that swings the pendulum to both genders. As beauty and body standards come and go, people are susceptible to these new crazes because they appear novel, when really it's a lived trope repackaged and sold to further disseminate this horrific rhetoric and practices pertaining to the face and body. We must start to ask questions when we see people as young as Clavicular - who was born in 2005 - capable of influencing such a noxious shift in body image mediatically.
With this article, we hope to illuminate these body trends as plagues for the already suffering psyche navigating this network polluted world. Between the manosphere backing hyper-masculinity through bone shaving and injecting yourself with peptides and the soft adoption of drug abuse, there is short-term satisfaction when partaking in these trends - both men and women navigating social platforms are subjected to these pervasive body-tricks that promote insecurity, harm, and femphobia. With the acceptance and skewed validation when it comes to these looksmaxxing techniques, it does however highlight an important consideration: Yesterday it was Heroin chic, today it is Lookmaxxing. Will the human body be able to withstand the race of transhumanism through trends of the future? How long until we become archandroids?
References (APA 7th)
- The Tiger News. (2024, November 17). Kate Moss & heroin chic: The dark side of fashion. The Tiger News. https://thetigernews.org/7591/informative/kate-moss-heroin-chic-the-dark-side-of-fashion/
- BigDihDiddy. (2025, May 19). I tried smoking crack for the first time [Online forum post]. Looksmaxxing Forum. https://forum.looksmaxxing.com/threads/i-tried-smoking-crack-for-the-first-time.50256/
- Looksmaxxing. (n.d.). Looksmaxxing [Online forum]. Retrieved May 12, 2026, from https://looksmaxxing.com
- Tolhurst, A. (2021, April 19). The toxic body image of the 2000s. Medium. https://alextolhurst.medium.com/the-toxic-body-image-of-the-2000s-165c928b50c3
- U.S. Conference of Mayors on 21 May 1997
Everything is Performative to Someone who just Spectates
Francis Okezie| May 5 2026
You learn who you are by experiencing who you aren’t
Current culture is dragging the word Performative to the ground. I have a bone to pick with the misrepresentation and conflation of performance/ the nature of “performativity”. The word is being defined as fakeness, disingenuousness and nefariousness arbitrarily. Too many times, I’m scrolling on twitter and someone will call the most mundane actions performative. Words mean things and I can’t bear that reframe when considering the grand scheme of living. Semantically, to perform is to act; to act is to do; it acknowledges an attitude social media exudes around action — it bashes it. Social media wants you apathetic, nonchalant and irritably judemental; social media also wants you to develop an inferiority complex. When we penalize action in this lens, viewing unconventional movement, unfamiliar ideas, or self-pivotations, we constrict our experimentation and overachingly — our self discovery. I’m inviting you to view performance in life-making through a dramaturgical screen. We perform everyday, and there isn’t anything wrong with that, it’s everything right with life-making when it comes to intention and transformative justice.
You are the main* character, yes, but you’re also the playwright, director, costume designer, camera man, usher & confectionary-popcorn seller while you simultaneously perform/do/create the structure, context, characters(through relational interactions with the world), language and themes(values) of your play. When I find myself questioning and investing time trying to decode whether someone’s performance is ‘real’ I am distracted from my own pursuits of meaning and impact in the act of creating. When spectating you are often trapped in someone else’s imagination, and you must engage your own imagination in order to break free. An actor can’t act when they are caught up in what the audience perceives of them.
And don’t subject yourself to Spectactation; spending your life watching, scoping, assessing how other people live theirs. Janelle Monae said it best in her song Q.U.E.E.N “I heard this life is just a play with no rehearsal I wonder will this be my final act tonight”. When we look at life dramaturgically we realize it’s all improv, you will never have these moments again. Shakespeare believed the world is like the stage of a theatre, and life is like a big drama, in which different men and women enter (through birth), play their individual parts, and exit (death). There’s no need to worry about what others will think, you won’t ever get a chance to express yourself in this situation again. In order to find who you are, you have to understand who you aren't, you start that process through performing. Through various modes you engage yourself in what you want to be and see.
Performance is intentional and transformative life-making. Cells are performing duties in your body actively, functioning so you can read this conclusion — if they didn’t you’d die. It is concerning and shallow hearing performative being used as an insult because it discourages you from emerging and operating outside your preconceived comfort. You’re constantly feeding a complex of inferiority when you let the audience’s opinions feed into your performance, your actions and your comrade’s will never be real or genuine when invested in spectation. An example of my defiance was in 2019 — undoubtedly my worst fashion year; I was going to school in colourful durags, fila disruptors and knock off off-white sweatshirts and I was really happy with my style but all my friends hated it. Still, I embraced my style until I decided it wasn’t me anymore, then I swiftly put my energy towards imagining what I wanted to look like, whose music I should listen to, and who I wanted to be after the original real — I was ready for transformation because I did an act I knew wasn’t congruent anymore with who I wanted to become. Through that process of not knowing, I grew closer to discovering myself. When you perform you negotiate your imagination into reality, and often you’ll experiment with things outside of conventions, you as an individual will feel unfamiliar, uncomfortable, cringe or queer but that is the natural and authentic process of finding one’s self in all this noise. Even if it makes others uncomfortable you should love who you are and more importantly — who you are becoming.
- Brown, A. M. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. AK Press.
- Monáe, J. (2013). Q.U.E.E.N. [Song]. On The electric lady. Wondaland Arts Society / Bad Boy Records.
- Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). As you like it (Act 2, Scene 7).