On Connection

by Kae Tempest

I was in a lot of pain. Somehow, creativity reached through the fog when nothing else could. It gave me guidance, offered me purpose and connected me to all other creative people. It was transformative. I fell in love with music. I fell absolutely head over heels in love and I became joyful. I experienced creativity as my older self, or higher self: a voice that literally came into my head and told me what to do. I found community with the writers and musicians whose work I immersed myself in. I found a calling and pursued it with an obsessional fixation. It gave me new direction, new friendships and diverted me away from where I was heading, when I needed it the most. As I have grown, my creativity has been the constant that has grown with me. Always here. Always demanding I work harder to become the kind of person I want to be. Giving me the energy to pursue ideas in new ways. Keeping me alive. Along the journey I have come up against a lot of people who just don’t get it. In the past, I understood them as being ‘closed’ people, completely switched off. I used to get frustrated with these people, angry at a lack of ‘consciousness’. If I could only ‘reach’ them, I was sure that I could ‘change their minds’. But now, thankfully, I see things differently. I see that every single person is affected by the violence of existence in different ways, and that people carry their burdens however they can. People suffer a great deal, and ideally they must process their traumas in or...