You know,
I have my speech prepared..
about my love and loyalty
and how much she will mean to me..
but frustratedly, the days of lonely
used to be more purposeful..
Maybe I’ll never have it all..
and these doubts are reminders
that I’ll never have it all..
Like being myself is not enough
and never was
a path to my one true love
I could hope..
hope.
alone.
– janberry. 21sep2017. 7:08pm.
Only now growing up socially…
worse things have happened.
failing forward. inertia dragging my emotions along.
age means nothing anymore,
and I have to accept that,
painful like teeth emerging.
Tooth fairy, spare me a dollar nah?
I’ll pay it back, just let me move forward painlessly.
harder on myself than anyone will ever be,
even still, the warrior way is not…painlessly.
– janberry. © 29 mar 2017. 12.16pm.
Far from Finished by Voice revealed our innately progressive nature, always yearning and stretching toward a better self. Trinbagonian optimism overrides our toughest circumstances, and Full Extreme from Ultimate Rejects captured this unflinchingly. The truest songs always resonate the most.
When 3 Canal’s, Blue, was first released, I was still cloistral; living aside from my queerness and love for women. In the video for Blue, I saw in the gyrations, a liberation and celebration that made me ask my teenaged self, ‘When will I ever be blue?’
I fought myself for 20 years and my self won. I am blue this year, blue with liberation, blue with celebration, blue with self knowledge, blue with empowerment, blue with gratitude…20 years later. How magical! Time is writing me an awesomely #blue story.
“So run tell Iwer George and Blaxx that they cyah take meh title..dis year, I’s meh only rival..” – Voice, Far From Finished
I am my only rival and I’m far from finished. – Janberry
A few days ago I closed all my social media – Facebook and then Instagram and lastly Twitter.
I found two things to be true for me:
Social media had become an extension of my pride..my ego..a need to control the narrative surrounding who I am…thereby making me feel good, feel proud.
I could succeed at social media but still fail at social interaction, and social interaction is something that I will always need to apply extra effort to. I’ve seen time and time again how social media and social interaction are not the same.
Growing up the way I did, it’s imperative that I get better at social interaction. It’s way too easy for me to revert to my comfort zone…being alone with a book or a paper and pen..and just not talk for weeks, months, years..
I came off social media so I could focus on actually increasing my social skills. That might be the height of irony.
Love These Walls Down – released © 2015. Janberry.
A love anthem, of loss and love and recovery – much like the tales of spiritual search, great love is hard fought for but well worth it.
I decided to finally release this because there is a lot more music to come, so I’m flushing the archives. This is the first track on my sophomore album, which will be a dub album.
Dub Track produced/mastered by Mark ‘Jah Servant’ Giles
Composition/Vocals: Janessa ‘Janberry’ Mc Kell
I have spent a long time deliberately working through issues – plowing through them, sifting through them to uncover myself in the muck and mire of pain. In my first book’s cover, an image of me was propelling into the sky, slightly disentangled from a gooey and dark substance. I’d believed at the time, that the dark and gooey substance was so enmeshed in me that the only way to expunge it and free myself was through constant affirmation of the truth that I was essentially indistinguishable without it, unless I was re-made. So, my journey throughout Godcall was borne of renewal…and transformation.
I’ve come back to that dark and gooey substance only to see that I am indistinguishable from it, but also that spirit and flesh form me in the body of this old soul.
Some people say I talk in tongues…I often submerge my words under a sea of metaphor, to soften the blow of truth. Life is a deep thing – and I dive deep. Of course, I can tell you what I see under there but you will feel like it bore fangs and were devoid of light…unless you yourself have delved there – exposed yourself to yourself and confronted the realities of who you are without religion, without shame, without companion, without narratives, and looked at those demons. Scare them by your courage – they sit in the pit of your pain and fear gorging on your denial.
We are false and true, perfectly imperfect. There are things we know, and there are things we don’t know. I think the problem with humanity is that we loftily declare knowing. This is not relativism or existentialism (and if you’re wondering what that means, dictionaries are only a Google away). This is reality.
I’m precociously aware of the God who created everything I see. There are parts of me that I tried to separate and bury, so that a new self may emerge – and a new self DID emerge – one that grows bolder and bolder to delve beneath the surface until my self comes out victorious. I’ve become more of myself and to be fair to my self, I have to defend this self, so you may find that I am more able to, with clarity, tell you when you have stepped on that self…when you have stepped on my toes in your own attempts at self-exhortation.
You will find that I am bolder, and you may interpret it as confrontational. Don’t.
