At any concert you attend, you’re likely to see an electric guitar weaving in and out of the music. Sometimes playing rhythm. Sometimes a ridiculously skilled lead solo, reaching for the upper limits of virtuosity without crashing into the melodic sun. But regardless of the purpose, you could isolate this guitar from anything else around it and hear its electrified presence very, very clearly. It would not matter if you strummed, picked, or even whispered across the strings; sound would come out in an unmistakable way. It would demand to be heard.

Guitar began as a diversion away from struggling with the trumpet. What started off as some good clean fun in the 5th grade brass section had, by 8th grade, become tedious and full of friction. I couldn’t hide my struggles with pitch so easily. I couldn’t avoid being in the bottom half of the trumpet troupe whenever we had sectionals. It was hard to be a Deaf man playing trumpet when you couldn’t isolate your sound. You had to trust what you were playing didn’t stand out amidst the chorus of blares alongside you. But guitar? Guitar you could isolate. And you could especially do so with an acoustic guitar in an empty house, strumming chord after chord, singingly loudly and very badly until your parents arrived home. Trumpet practice couldn’t compete with Carson Daly’s TRL. But TRL couldn’t quite compete with the possibilities of guitar.

There was just one hangup: just like I wanted power and noise in my hearing aid, I wanted a louder guitar. Initially, there was no amp or pickup to plug in with. And strumming softly with my fingers just didn’t quite push the notes pass the threshold of what I could not only hear but could actually enjoy. It felt, at first, like another instrument inaccessible to me. That is, until I was given a pick. From the first time I struck those six strings, a pick wedged between my thumb and index finger, I felt free. I couldn’t quite say anything was possible. But I could say a lot more was possible than any amount of trumpet practice could provide.

The pick was the key to unlocking the sound I desired. It made the guitar just loud enough without losing its warm. I would suffer through the dial-up Google searches looking for songs with chords I felt I could play (basically: anything that did not have an F or a bar chord). Sometimes I’d use the picks so much I’d lose them. They’d find their way into very pocket in my wardrobe except in the pocket I wore at precisely the time I wanted to play. So I resorted to playing with the top of my nails. Little did I know the constant beating against these fingertip shields would cause nailbed trauma, little white spots looking like breaking white waves amidst a beige nailbed sea. I spent so much of my life worried it was a hygiene thing, that I didn’t wash my hands enough. That girls would eventually hold my hand and recoil in a hurry, utterly disgusted by my lack of nailbed care.

But no. All it meant is that music had once again enveloped me in a way a little pain couldn’t get in the way of.

Whenever I think about making or holding space for others, I think about carpentry. I dream of simple tables made with simple materials, products of the middle ground between utility and artistry. Sometimes they’re stained. Sometimes they’re bare, reminders of the trees they once were. But these tables, they are not here to admire. They are not here to be eaten upon. They are not here to be decorated or inserted into Pinterest dream boards. No, these tables are here for one purpose only: to hold weight.

Whenever I think about the pressure we feel as humans, both self-inflicted and pushed upon by others, I think of a stack of books, papers, and other rectangular tedium, smushed and piled atop each other, a leaning, swerving column over ever-shifting gravity. The forearms begin to flare up. The weight cannot be held much longer. And so the body shifts, in ways both awkward and dangerous, to change the center of the situation. To find something approaching comfort. It’s bound to fail. The pile will clatter to the floor, a cacophony of failure, overextension, and demoralization all crinkled together.

In this metaphor, there’s only one way to help: to tap the person on the shoulder and guide them in the direction of this particular table. To slowly move in unison with their hands, nudging them towards the boundaries of this wooden place of respite. All the responsibilities and worries and fears and deadlines still exist. They’re not going anywhere, still stacked high above everyone nearby. But for a minute, if only a minute, the person can feel their way back to something normal. They can rediscover the contours of a healthier body. They can remind themselves of what of these pressures they have control of and which they do not. They can gather themselves and begin again, a bit stronger than before, still weary but always, always thankful for that safe space in their time of need.

We’re always fighting time. Trying to get more of it. Trying to make more of it. Trying to see where it’s gone missing in plain sight. We keep reminding ourselves everyone gets the same 24 hours a day even though we’re fully aware not everyone has the same privileges or life situation to work with.

I especially felt time beating upon me as we watched our daughter grow and celebrate her first birthday. It doesn’t seem possible that a tiny human could change that much in a year. And yet. Millions of babies do it every year, without fail, without ever once stumbling upon the Fountain of Ever-Youth and remaining in their current form for more than a few days.

I’ve always been drawn to the aura of knight armor, and yet looking back at the picture I drew, I can’t help but think about how armor eventually went out of style. Something far more efficient took its place. Something easier to move in. Something you didn’t drown in sweat from. Over time, the materials got better, lighter, and stronger. Things evolved.

And yet. We’re still fighting.

Time is all about framing. It is what you make of it. It can be your friend or your enemy, and sometimes both at once. How we view time says far more about us than anything ticking or tocking. It says how we feel about the way we spend our lives. It says how much we build it out with being busy. Time can be your adversary or it can be your companion, the pacemaker walking alongside you, quiet and steady, simply doing a thankless job. Time, in its best moments, can even disappear inside a world in which seconds become hours and hours become seconds, when the expansion and contraction of the universe around us reminds us, in those beautiful, fleeting moments, that there just may be some magic left in this world.

The internet has warped our brains to think we need a bigger audience than necessary. The likes, the loves, the retweets, the emoji responses – it all minimizes pure human interaction into such a confining form that we can’t help but feel wanting of more. One of the more reassuring things my younger 20-something read is when Kevin Kelly wrote about how you really only need 1,000 true fans to have a career. If you get them, they will follow you wherever you go and will sustain you through painful droughts. I think about this a lot as some of my favorite writers – people who’ve made a clear impact on me – have increasingly moved to Substack. The ongoing disruption of social media – especially in Twitter – has forced creators to find their true fans.

When I drew this picture, I thought about how you only really need three true fans in your life. You need at least three people who know who you are and who will give you the space to walk around and vent with your pokier edges. These are the people who’ve seen you through your highs, lows, and many in-betweens. They’re the few people you feel like truly get you. And when shit gets really heated, they’re what you can count on to whir around and cool you down. To make you feel refreshed.

From Alice Wu’s transcendent The Half of It (on Netflix), there’s been a movie line that’s rattled within my brain since first viewing:

“I had a painting teacher once tell me that the difference between a good painting and a great painting is typically five strokes. And they’re usually the five boldest strokes in the painting. The question, of course, is which five strokes?”

– Aster Flores, The Half of It

When I got toward the end of this fan drawing, I started inking it before I realized there were no motion lines. There was no indication the fan was doing what a fan is supposed to do. It just sat there. I didn’t have the confidence to really add another potential five strokes, to take it from a half-baked, decent idea to something more whole. I didn’t even know what the five strokes would be. So I let it be.

The universe has a way of rhyming. At the time I left the drawing alone, my rationale was that your three fans should be there when nothing is going for you. When there’s no real motion worth supporting. When you’re stuck, waiting for another wave to run over you and pull you in. And then as I went through these blog posts, I thought about the number 3 again and the struggle to list things smoothly in ASL.

Perhaps it’s just another reminder that 3 will always be enough.

Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.

Spirit is like butter on toast. Used so often and spread so thin in its use and definition that it often disappears within the bread, only visible in its gleam under certain lights. You could forget its presence until you take a bite. By then, there’s no way to deny it. It’s there, deep within everything.

The ASL sign for ghost looks the same as spirit. Both have the nondominant hand with an index finger and thumb touching while the other hand makes the same shape and draws out a squiggly line.

You could be led to think they’re the same. But the ghost haunts; the spirit reminds us of what’s possible. The attainable absolution. The brewing brain. The creative connection.

When I think about spirit, I think about how it makes our body lighter, almost immaterial. It emanates from within and makes our bodies a silhouette, a shadow behind it all. Suddenly, the aches and pains go away. The worries about money disappear. The stress that wore you down has subsided, if only for a few brief moments. The world feels a little bigger, a little wider. What didn’t seem possible before now flickers within you, a warm, neon sign saying Here I Am, Ready To Go Wherever This May Take Me.