Life is But a Competition ..

Life is but a competiton.. says no one. 

The idea of being in competition with another is truly asinine. This mentality often labeled "crabs in a bucket" is the secret killer amongst our community especially in the arts. Rather compete, complete.  

 Creativity is a shared space and born from kinetic energy between a multitude of individuals. Helping each other will not going to stifle your vision nor is it going to eliminate you.  We as people have to learn how to work as team. The bigger the team the bigger ability to conquer. 

For every artist born, one is detoured due to the feeling of not being supported. And for every artist winning, one is looking up to them wishing they had the courage to showcase their talent. The world is like a game of tennis. The game of tennis is categorized into two segments- singles and doubles. Singles matches highlight one player, but is overshadowed by the doubles match.

In the doubles match, both players showcase their strengths and weakness all while being a team player. For example, Serena and Venus Williams. Both athletes were introduced into the world as the powerhouse tennis players who swept every competitor underneath of the rug in a doubles match. While they would eventually went off to dominate the singles category., It was their doubles matches that allowed both to understand the strengthens and hone in on fixing their weakness. 

I encourage every creative, young and old to bond together to make a magically experience and tell our stories; for these stories motive each other to continue to dedicated their time on perfecting their craft. 

Photography- Gioncarlo Valentine 

Art direction- Jaipugh 

Startling Truth

When We Come To It 

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When we come to it, Then we will confess that not the pyramids with their stones set in mysterious perfection nor the gardens of babylon hanging as eternal beauty in our collective memory not the grand canyon kindled into delicious color by Western sunsets When we come to it, we this people on this minuscule and pithless globe who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger yet who petition in the dark for tokes of peace we this people on this mote of matter in the mouths abide cankerous words which challenge our very exisitence yet out of same mouths come songs of exquisite sweetness   

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet whose hands can strike with such abandon that in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet traveling through casual space past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns                                                                 To a destination where all signs tell us it is possible and imperative that we learn a brave and startling truth 

Words by; Maya Angelou 

" We must confess" 

Art Direction- Jai Pugh

Photography- Gioncarlo Valentine