MIXTAPE - volume 2

from the in-between space of both, and.... feelings

Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin - Blanton Museum of Art

you!!!

In clinical psychology, the term splitting is used to describe the inability to hold opposing thoughts, feelings, or beliefs at once. Someone who splits tends to use "all-or-nothing" thinking, seeing the world as either "black or white." We’ve all used splitting before, because it's really difficult (especially when under an immense amount of stress) to hold multiple emotions at once. But if I've learned everything over the past 4+ years of graduate school training and more importantly my 30 years as a human, it’s that either/or thinking is dull and distorted. As multilayered people, we are more interesting, nuanced and complicated than that.

I believe that everything -- from racial identity to sexual orientation to gender identity to the weather to the democratic party presidential candidate— exists on a spectrum. And as such, everything requires complex thinking. I truly can't think of anything that can be accurately simplified into black-or-white binary categorization. Everything is more colorful, swirling, layered.

This week's playlist is all about making space for both, and. With a mixture of genres, these songs will get you feeling a range of emotions.

Because this life is:

both wonderful & terrible

both boring & exciting

both ugly & beautiful

both painful & healing

both joyous & sorrowful

both expansive & short

both light & dark

love,

Jesse