Imperfections can be celebrated. They show use.

I think about my hands, and the marks and blemishes and scratches on them. There’s where glass cut me open in a car crash. There’s where I tore my wrist moving gear, on tour. These are the nails I cracked and scraped on my skateboard this week. Tattoos of punk bands, scars from darker times.

They’re all signs of use. Signs of life. Signs that I’ve been out into the world and I have not emerged unscathed. I appreciate every single mark on my body for what it is, and for what it represents. I think the same is true of my tools and instruments and the gear I throw in my bag each day, the cracked glass of my phone, dropped trying to take photos of a punk show in a friend’s living room. The dents on a laptop that I used as a DJ and that I wrote with in a hotel room in Amsterdam. The blood specks still staining my first guitar, leaned on the wall in my house.

It’s all been used, and it’s all been used well. I’ve not tried to protect it against the world, or kept it all in a box, hidden away somewhere. I’ve not tried to hide myself away.

We’re used, and so are our things. It’s better that way.

xox Joany 🍕