Emmet Michael

https://calgaryguardian.com/calgary-music-emmet-michael/

My worth is not measured by my quantity or quality of work. Art can just be what it is, sacred just for existing outside of someone. It cannot be measured as good or bad, only honest or dishonest.

I am practicing honesty in my writing, primarily with myself. I am trying not to stifle the “ugliness” or deny the natural joy. I want my optimism to find a place somewhere in the music too.

It’s funny how much harder it is to write about hope or joy, even in spaces where it is most prominent. Maybe I’m afraid of…

There is a feeling of remarkable nothingness where I used to feel implicit purpose. However, no peace of mind is worthy of rejecting the absolute truth of finitude. That is where meaning comes from. We may only have this life, and I can no longer stand to waste it worrying about where I might end up after. There is no greater offence against true meaning than to insist on a final destination. Meaning is not inherent, it’s created. I am still learning how to create my own meaning, after a lifetime of…

I am haunted by the prospect of “growing out of” that which I am meant to be held by.

My own shaking hands coddle my resistance to joy.

I am pulling drag after relentless drag of dissatisfaction - one shallow breath in, one countless breath out.

Where did all of that air come from? How long did I hold it in?

Suddenly I am weightless.

-EM

When considering what queer joy means, I refer to the everyday beauty I find in nature. There is so much diversity in the natural world that we overlook and take for granted. “Queer” by definition is anything that transcends what greater society deems as “normal”.

What a blessing it is to exist beyond what we are expected to be. What an exciting journey it is to be able to discover and celebrate each other as we are. I want to stop in my tracks to appreciate the embodiment of love in other human beings the…

I suppose anxiety is the tension between longing for more and settling for less. 

Stillness is both my greatest fantasy and my greatest fear. 

How do I learn to sit with something when it is always changing? 

How do we love the things we can’t hold? 

How do I become the star-shaped flower bud in my hand, unfazed by the pressure to bloom?

-EM

Don’t speak your truth, know it.

Know your worth well enough that you never have to justify it again.

Climb to the top of the hill without having to die on it.

Feel the weight of your body suppress the will of your soul to flee.

Build a home so inviting that you never want to leave again.

Make it a space worthy of divine visitation.

It doesn’t matter if it was only your imagination.

We can will anything we want into existence. 
 

-EM

I am dying a spiritual death, and I don’t know if I believe in rebirth. 

I am heaving cynicism out of lungs gifted to me by creation. 

I’m alive, I am spirit-filled, and that in and of itself should be enough to transcend doubt, 

But only if I can admit I believe in myself.
 

Photo credits: Kassia J Photography

-EM

I crave to be haunted in the same way a car wreck demands our irrevocable attentions.

My spirit bears the threat of being totalled - of skidding gracefully into some ditch of waning memory.

When my pick up truck fishtailed backwards off of the highway, my first thought was not to pray.

It was an utterance of acceptance, a brand new kind of peace.

I am trying to forgive myself for that.

-EM

I still remember the day I told a crowd of 200 strangers that I was transgender. It was the first time I’d disclosed this to an audience at a formal event. It was never something I HAD to do, or that I owed to anyone, but I felt like so much of the meaning behind my songs would be buried if I didn’t. I wanted people to know the lens these songs were being written from. I swallowed my fear and told my story exactly as it was, without trying to filter any of it out. I found so much freedom in that moment, and…