faking jazz together

Holly Blackmore

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of faking jazz together.

Today I re-logged in to my personal Instagram account because I finally felt whole & ready to project outwards. Unfollowed lots of people because the more posts I have on my feed, the more content I have to feed on. The stress was almost instantaneous. Instagram wouldn’t let me log out again because I accidentally clicked ‘remember details’. It seems like everybody is just faking jazz together. Girls in nice dresses and boys in camp chairs. Look at me. Let me control your perception of my person. When really this profile is nothing but a small, two-dimensional shadow of all that my Being carries.

We want to be seen as desirable subjects in a social world that guarantees our objectification. They say that any attachment to self-identity is attachment to ego. The clothes that you wear, the photos that you post, the form of your physical body - all become irrelevant. It’s just fake jazz. I want to have relationships with people that feel deeper than convenience. More than time and place. I want to surrender my external identity and strip myself back to bare flesh. I want to stop being forced to fake jazz with fucking everyone. It’s all just time we’ll never get back.

The white glint of lightning bounced off my windows last night and I lay awake watching the storm unleash her fury. Tears welled in my eyes but did not fall. When I woke the sun was climbing a copper sky and I held myself in the warm, cotton space of my bed. Time for myself each day, before engagement with anybody else. My body did not want to move, hamstrings tight with the extremes of physical action and inertia.

The world always seems either a very hopeful or very desolate place to me.