Art is all that matters. When I'm broken and down and twisted and I cannot express myself, I somehow forget what I'm missing. Then I listen back to the things I made and I'm filled with emotion, so overwhelmed, and reminded why I'm dying. I'm in pain because my heart is stuck in my throat. When I begin to doubt what I'm doing here, and art doesn't seem enough, it seems too difficult to realise, it feels impossible to materialise - I listen to my songs and I read my stories and I am reminded why it is all such a struggle. It is a struggle because the outcome is immortal and it is the time machine everyone is trying to invent. Art is a time machine. It's true, I'm hurting a lot today. My stomach and head, my back and my chest, all ache and cramp, I'm faint and weak. I can't express myself today. But when I look to the art, I remember. It gives me courage. Only the very best of all things can bring courage. Courage is extremely precious. We must all make sure not to taint our courage with the devil of comparison. It is destructive and pointless. If we must torture ourselves, I think it should at least be by our own criticism, and not alongside the art of others. Being within ourselves is agony enough. And I believe that isolation and uninterrupted imagination are the true muses. They gift us with art that is thorough and untouched. It arrives from a deeper, more tangled place. It achieves clarity, then. Perfectly unclouded in its presentation, whether that be of something cruel or divine. At one end of clarity is Vulgarity and at the other is Exquisiteness, and both ends are beautiful because they are this pure. But as you move towards the middle of the spectrum from either end of it, the area in the middle is murky and inauthentic and lame. Perhaps there is no reason in creating anything that does not sincerely fit into the extremes of either Vulgar or Exquisite. There is no point at all in trying to make something anything. The more you try, the murkier it gets. Leave things as perfectly as they are. Leave the flower alone and it will be beautiful. Leave the filth on the floor and the gruesome details as awful as they are, and the place will be beautiful. Don’t try to capture the flower and don’t try to clean up the filth. Don’t try at all: this is the only way to attain perfection. - y leigh

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