I’m going to start with a tiny background, a surface level framework of what makes up Henk. I grew up with two parents, one a biological mother, the other an adoptive father which at five years old I didn’t know what that meant, I just knew my dad was special. I’d tell everyone, “I was adopted by my dad, but not my mom.” Not knowing 15 years later that may be one of the hardest things I would have to deal with, so hard that it would lead me to start feeling…….uh-oh that F word; feel.

Since I’ve been out of my mom’s house, there was always this ache, this pull tugging at my heart. I didn’t really know what it was or why I was feeling this way, I met up with another young adult that I casually knew who had also moved to Los Angeles from SoCal. We hadn’t really even hung out before but, that night changed my life forever. He asked me if I wanted to smoke, I said sure assuming like any other upper middle class white, naive, fresh out of his parents house would, marijuana. Nope, wrong we’re in LA now boy, it’s time to man up, or man down however you’d like to put it.

I’m going to leave a time lapse right there and let you wrack your brain around what I inhaled that night, but I will tell you all the tugging, heaviness and burden was lifted from my precious innocent life more than any Happy Place on Earth could. This article isn’t about addiction or drug abuse or whatever label you desire to place on those who are in pain. This is about society and all of our vices.

Yes, every single one of us whether conscious of it or not has a vice. Whether that’s sex or gambling or hell….even sugar. Your fixation lets your brain, your heart, your soul escape whether it’s for a moment or for a few days, you get to wash that all away. And fuck, after 15 years of unknowingly feeling blue all the time, had I have known one little whiff of vapor could blow all that away. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ve been realizing lately that humans don’t want to feel, we don’t like feeling. I don’t know if it’s something we’re taught, or what but, if I’m sober I have to feel I have to let it out, because my escape is a dark, dimly lit road that I’m not sure how far it goes, or how far I would make it down.

I watch from afar figuratively of course as I meet new personalities, who aren’t really people at all, they are mindless bodies. The minute I talk about the way something makes me feel, or play a song that tugs a tiny bit, they act like they just heard a mother screaming over the casket of her dead son. So, they ask me to change subjects or press next. Because they would rather be an oblivious being, with just a heartbeat to keep them alive.

It’s so hard to watch, so hard to connect when no one literally not a single person on this earth is 100% legitimate with anyone they meet, and our society acknowledges, accepts and are totally aware of this but, we are all so fucking afraid of each other that it’s not an elephant in a room, it’s 4,500 rainbow elephants in every place we are surrounded by beating hearts that DO feel, you are not the tin man. You have a heart, take a moment and breathe let it feel, honestly let it feel because you will never dispose the bricks that weigh you down if you don’t. Write, sing, I don’t care do something for YOU! Because you cannot connect with another spirit if both are covered under walls deeply bruised from the ignored weight you’ve left on it. I’m tired of opening my finally open character only to be met with mockery, laughter and others internal demons.

Take this if you don’t take anything else, if you go on living in the now, for the rest of the breaths you have left those chains that you are trying to ignore will turn you into a robot because you will be full of so much steel then your will naturally, beaming, beating light.

love & art, 1991, h.holveck.