The Search for My Why

Lately, I’ve been grappling with my why as an artist.

For the past six months, I’ve stepped away from performing, and for the past two, I’ve deleted IG and Twitter off my phone completely. I felt like I was compartmentalizing myself for others’ consumption; performing the recommended sequence of presentations I’d been trained to execute as a 21st century singer, but without true clarity around my authentic intentions. Why was I going through these monotonous motions?

While a part of my artistic self wants to be a beacon of hope, of light, and of love for others, I can’t help but feel a bit queasy relying on these externally measured metrics of impact. The truth is that, at the end of the day, I can’t control nor measure the effect I have on my audiences. Which left me with the question: what does it actually mean to want to make an “impact”?

Today, I’d like to share with you how I’ve deciphered the answer. It hasn’t come easily. This week has been wrought with sadness, stuckness, and confusion. But finally - and thanks in large part to my friends, the best sounding boards I could ask for - something has shifted. So now I stand here before you, at yet another beautiful turning point in my artistic journey, changing again.

Creating from the Void: Expanding Expression

As I’ve been reintegrating my femininity and embracing a more fluid expression of my gender, colours have returned to my life. Pinks, purples, and flamboyant patterns adorn me in places where neutral tones and textures used to hold exclusive court. Not only do I no longer fear being clocked as queer or trans, but I actually desire it - to be seen as the non-binary man I am at my core. The way I perceive myself moving through public space has expanded - and with it has come a deep yearning for this expansion to be mirrored in my creative work, too.

After these many months off from both irl and url stages, I’ve finally broken out of the dull repetition of habit; the drawl of self-imposed expectation I'd been playing out for so long. This void of noise has cleared space for me to actually hear what is calling me forwards next. So, over the past few days, I’ve started sharing with creative friends and team members these new artistic ideas emerging from the void. I’ve noticed that the more I’ve articulated how I want to show up, the more undeniable these creative urges have become, as though naming them has brought them alive. But with their newly impassioned urgency, smack! The faster and harder they have hit the wall, the blockage, that’s been lurking there all along.

Facilitating Experiences, Not Just Performances

The truth is, I don’t just want to perform. I want to facilitate. I want to guide. I want to lead people into deeper relationship with the parts of themselves they’ve rejected. I want my live performances to be more than just singing—I want them to be immersive experiences of storytelling, guided meditation, and Internal Family Systems work. I want to help people send love to the places inside them they have left behind, because that’s what I love to do within my own self the most.

But to manifest a live show such as this would be to innovate an entirely new style of performance. Fears about how I would - or would not - be received peek their nauseous heads from behind the wall of my apprehension, holding it firmly in place. How will the external world react if I express my true creative urge?

And right here - at this juncture is where I have returned to the true nature of the impact I desire to embody. My art, my life, is about me. And I want to, deserve to express what I care about, what I value, what I am.

For the first time, I truly understand: it's not about how manifesting my work impacts others. It's about how manifesting my work impacts myself.

Impacting Myself First

Self-expression gives me energy. It helps me to see who I am. Writing my Substacks, sharing my YouTubes, I get to know a part of myself that I wouldn’t have had access to but through these exercises of articulation. The same goes for songwriting…and, too, for short-form expressions like TikToks or even tweets.

Every time I write a Substack post, I understand myself better. Every time I record a YouTube video, I embody my truth more fully. Every time I finish a song—crafting it to sound and feel precisely as I intend—I deepen my own emotional self-knowledge. And each time I share these creations, I take a stand for my own truth, echoing that self-solidarity across every platform where I click “Post.”

This framing enables me to show up in ways I am too afraid to when I focus on how the external world could react. I now see that I am not here to try to change other people’s lives. I am here to empty myself - to lay my inner world all out in front of me so that I can see the soul that I am. That fulfillment, that liberation - to truly know myself - is unparalleled. And I can’t take this sacred opportunity for granted.

Dying Empty: The Urgency of Self-Expression

Death is coming for me, one way or another. My life will continue to change, and with every change, an ending; a sacred door closed forever. This winter is nearly over; I see the bright purple crocuses emerging, the first green shoots pushing from craggy brown branches that have stood seemingly lifeless for months. What was once bare is now blooming again. And this is, in its own way, another kind of death—the death of what was, in order to make way for what is destined to be, next.

Death is coming for me, one way or another. Eventually, my body will die - and when that day comes, I want to die emptied of my self-expression, and full of my self-knowledge. I want to die knowing that I embodied my Truth wholly and completely. I want to die fulfilled, knowing that my self-expression was not about the effect it had on the world - it was about the effect it had on my own soul.

That is the real impact I am calling forward next. Not the external revolution, but the internal evolution. The personal transformation that only creating, finishing, and sharing a work of art can facilitate.

The Audience as the Container

This is where the audience comes into play: in the container they innately imply. If I were to speak these thoughts into an empty room, there would be no constraints, no context, and no need for precision. But when I know I am communicating with another consciousness, it demands articulation. It invites clarity. It asks me to refine my tastes, my opinions, my perspectives—and ultimately, to define the essence of my unique soul.

This is the opportunity I have in this lifetime: to steward myself. To guide my spirit down a pathway of authentic self-expression, self-discovery, and self-awareness. This is the true path of the artist.

And that means it's time for me to step up to the plate in a new way.

Branding: The Art of Being Known

In the 15 years since I first started releasing music, I’ve never fully applied myself, my best, to my career. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t have access to the level of authenticity that I intuitively felt I needed. But now that I am transitioned — and not just into manhood, but into the non-binary masculinity that feels most like home — I find myself studying the craft of storytelling as a musician. What does it look like to share my words, my works, in a way that is both deeply true and deeply intentional?

For years, I hesitated at the word “branding,” resisting the idea of shaping my artist identity with an audience in mind. But after watching a particular video on the subject (linked), I realized that branding, at its best, is simply the art of being known. The clearer I am about my essence, the easier it becomes to show up fully without dilution or compromise. Indeed, this clarity does not hinder me—it liberates me. In its essence, branding is about doubling down on my true self.

Embracing my True Archetypes

Through exploring Carl Jung’s 12 main archetypes, I’ve come to the conclusion that, at my core, I am here to share the hero’s journey of my life through the archetypes I naturally embody:

• The Sage: the seeker of wisdom, the one who yearns for a better world, who distills knowledge and shares it.

• The Everyman: the one who fosters belonging, who connects with others, who relates through transparency and personal vulnerability.

This is what I love: polishing the gems of wisdom hidden in my daily trials and tribulations, holding them up to the light, and sharing them with the world. I now realize that centring my creative expression around these truths does not constrain me—it validates, celebrates, and more deeply enables me to be who I already am.

And my music? It gets to be the soundtrack to this life story I’m living. Because when all is said and done, I will lay on my deathbed knowing that my life itself was my most comprehensive, intentional, and authentic work of all. I will die knowing it was never about external impact, but about me creating the most fulfilling impact on my own sweet soul. I deserve to be fully liberated; to write, to sing, and to say what I feel inside. To discover who I am by inviting myself to share, over and over again.

And so, I invite myself, again.

xx
Forrest & UtopianGPT