SPIRITUAL SOAP: Artistic Integrity vs. Insta-Reactions

A battle against brain fungus

Before we were The Black Sheep, we were a newsletter named Spiritual Soap. Please enjoy this article from our history!

I know you’re reading this. The thought of your reaction is always near the top of my mind. I can imagine your reaction as easily as I can visualize the apathy on an LA waiter’s expression.

Something happened to me that I can’t easily explain or undo, but I’m doing both anyway. The voice I write with has changed texture and color in a chemical reaction to some new element. Making art feels like swimming in gelatin; the process is slow, thick, and though I see through it, I’m still stuck in the middle of an undifferentiated mass of something alien.

I want silence and focus, but the salvation they offer from my Jell-O prison evaporates like morning dew.

I used to talk with myself more. I used to navigate the world with my own intuition and interest—now I have it curated for me by indifferent systems. My internal monologue has been dead for years, replaced with the Digital Dialogue, something less like communication and more like schizophrenia.

There’s a steep price to pay for the ease of publication unmediated by gatekeepers. I will never never know the writer’s voice that doesn’t expect to be read, stretching out freely within the deathly silence on the other side of every word. I can’t remember what it felt like to create something that would never be seen—not just unpublished, but lacking all potential to be shared by message or photo.

Even the most private moments now carry the potential of becoming public.