Artist Statement

My first migraine happened when I was 6 years old.

As I grew, my health shifted through very confusing and painful misdiagnoses. As it shifted, though, so too have my abilities. I’m starting to think of them like states of matter, each one in their own different state at any given moment. Sometimes they can be frozen solid, sometimes a refreshing stream, sometimes floating through the air and sometimes plasma like fire. They aren’t all accessible at once. Sometimes they pair up in weird ways like when I want to choreograph a ballet about a parabola. Very, very rarely I have what seem to be partial, or focal, seizures near the parietal lobe which is where our senses are processed. When these events happen, my senses and perceptions come together as one like being in a snow globe of mystical light, color, sound, movement, and texture. I wish I could live in those moments, but alas I can only try to recreate what I remember of them. I understand why this type of seizures made people feel touched by the gods.

I can say that whatever caused my brain to go askew, it has been both a gift and a burden. Maybe the burden is the gift. By starving my neurons and then forcing me to recreate the connections between them, I found myself on new pathways I never could have imagined.
Who knows what other lives I might’ve lived if not for my health journey. Not me. It’s enough for me now to revel in it and milk it for all its worth.