FREED VERSE

Hello again. I have a story to tell you.

I sat on the floor of my not-mine New York apartment last night with a $4 pair of cosmetic shears in my right hand and a dollar-store handheld mirror in my left, absolutely botching my hair. I lopped another unplanned extra inch off my left side and peered at the choppy asymmetry in the mirror.

A slight smile crept onto my face. I loved it.

Don’t get me wrong, my ex-hairdresser mother is going to kill me when she sees my atrocious handiwork. But I was happy because it was fucked up. That meant I’d tried. I realized: I can be wrong about the risks I take. Not everything will go my way all the time, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do anything, period.

Anything real should feel like a risk. It should be weighty, grave even. Terrifying in the consideration that it matters if you fuck this one up, but that’s exactly why it must be done. It is this risk that defines creativity for me, and I don’t just mean making riskier art. I mean taking the risk of taking yourself seriously.

Taking yourself seriously is a daunting task. To recognize that you have a place in this world with something unique to bring to it—it seems so liminal to write it out now, so obvious, so (dare I say it?) cliché overdone. But to know something is different than to Know it with a capital K. Once you cross that bridge between abstract and concrete, once all the big dreams start becoming your day-to-day minutia—isn’t it just so—I could—

Kinda makes you want to dream smaller, doesn’t it?

easy: the mindset of someone who wants to stay small.

Eh, kinda. But where’s the fun in that?

Serious frequently comes with a prescription for sobriety. Not just in drugs-and-alcohol land (though that often is the case), but also in the way we carry ourselves. Our faces are long, our eyes heavy; there’s a frown over that steaming cup of joe, and the first words of small talk to escape your lips at the very least reminiscent of a complaint.

But serious doesn’t have to equate to somber. All serious means is real. If your version of ‘real’ comes with tight lips and a scowl, good on you. The world needs more strict first-grade teachers to traumatize the next bastardly generation into shape. But my version of real, more often than not, comes in waves: it starts with the rise, that overwhelming feeling of fuckthisisactuallyhappening, before crescendoing for a second; the world doesn’t collapse; I take a breath, look at my options; I’d rather surf up here, even if it’s just for a moment, than kerplunk back into that cold-ass ocean. I don’t know how to surf, but there’s sure to be something in the manual about putting your feet on the board and just standing, already.

So the next time you see me standing there, clueless, smiling, don’t think I’m not being serious. Behind those cheshire lips is the most serious thought I’ve ever had the chutzpah to think: “i’m already here, let’s see what i’m capable of.”

The only thing you are not allowed to do is give up.

Hence, the hair-cutting scissors. It’s funny, the day after I made the chop, people started noticing me. They started saying things about me on the street. Cried out “Flaca Mujer!” from a zooming bike; mid-crosswalk sing-songed “Hello there, Barbie Queen!”; grabbed a friend’s arm and pointed (“Her? In the—?” “—look at—” “—holy—I know!”)

There’s only ever been one paper prompt that ever truly stumped me through my lifelong career of bullshitting my way through academia. It went something around the lines,

“What is the significance of sight and being seen?”

For all the subsequent years this prompt has gnawed at me, for all the thought I’ve given it, I’m still not sure if I could write the essay. But after the day of pure recognition that strangers gave me—I Know. I know what it is to be seen. Even though I was likely being insulted (quick wiki scan for thin woman [slur]…), even an insult is proof that I was there, leaving impressions in people’s minds strong enough to compel them to—of all things—speak to me. Human connection, or something like that. I prefer to think of it as permanence.

Writing your story into the world is what’s supposed to make you permanent, but to me it’s human connection. Even if it’s just for a moment, to be seen for who you are is to be known. And that can never be taken away from you, because it’s not yours to keep. Others’ impressions of you—they’re theirs. Kinda makes you want to care how you show up, doesn’t it?

Good lord, I could never be a memoirist. I label my work as ‘creative’ or ‘literary’ because I cannot get behind the objective truth-value of a person. I tell the truth in the only way I know how: exaggeration, insertion, hyperbolization, whichever -ation you want to neologue with today. Made-up words or not, though, that’s what gives life its glimmer—knowing I can extract meaning from just about anything, whether it be so Sex-And-The-City, girl-in-her-twenties grandiose as chopping off four inches of my hair on a Tuesday night in Harlem or as small as the color of my shirt a passerby happens to notice. Extracting significances makes the world an oyster that always has a pearl hidden under its tongue. Even if there wasn’t one, I’d write it in anyway. Admit it. It’s the story you’d rather read and I’d rather write.

Bearing all this in mind, it’s time to let the ink spill. I wrote earlier that I don’t know whether I’d be able to write the witnessing essay—well, that’s a bold-faced, pearly-white lie. I could write it if I wanted to. And if there was an overworked, bookish TA grading me on it, I’d probably get at least an A-minus. To essai literally means to try, from the French essayer (attempt, endeavor). If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s try.

So, then, welcome back. This is my no-holds-barred, headfirst try—because I want a life with a little bit of oomph in it. Doesn’t that sound saucy?

The only caveat to all this oomph-ing about is that someone has to hear all my banging and clanging—and I hope I’ve slapped enough good words on the page today to make that person you. I’ll be posting cool-person essays twice a week on Substack (@alyssamurray) plus a poem or two every Sunday. (sunday stanzas? bottomless beats? fridge box rent fund?…still workshopping the name. oh no, guess you’ll just have to come back on sunday to see where it lands…noooo…)

The easiest way to support me and keep up with my work (and, trust me, there’s a lot of it coming) is to SUBSCRIBE! to my Substack and TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT MY WORK! Donations are nice and all that jazz, but all I want from my writing is for people to read it—so I am shamelessly asking you to share this page with your loved ones if you enjoyed reading this post or anything on the rest of my website. My goal is to have my voice rattle around in as many skulls as possible—down to help me do some noggin knocking?