I can’t sleep.
I’m just up in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to properly explain. To get your attention.
The Hallowed Wide is a pop album. True.
But… it’s like. A genuine manifesto to me. It’s an actual philosophy.
And it’s one I’ve been testing carefully in my real life for at least a few years now.
It’s like… performance art? Conceptual art? A novel? A film? I don’t know exactly…but it’s something.
It’s in the wedding band work that I do–in so many ways.
I’m not perfect at it, I’m still figuring it out (which is…part of the model too, to be clear), but I really try to think sort of radically about it.
I ask first-time officiants if they need a pep talk (sometimes they say “yes”! 
). I look out for the other vendors in tender ways, whenever I can. I try to be really creative with personnel problems on my team. I’m exploring alternate and artful social paths in real time. I know that might sound trite, and maybe it is a little over-earnest…but that’s part of the model, too.
I plumb the depths of these themes in my podcast. Working out The Hallowed Wide in a microcosm with deep focus on one person, nearly always a stranger, over a 2 hour period. Performance art. Right?
And god. Do I think about these things as an educator…
It’s EVERYTHING in that space. Looking for new pathways. Trying to get at something deeply human. Deeply creative.
Of course it’s in my marriage, my friendships.
And then. Next to all of that. It feels like a genuinely radical choice to have BELIEVED in this project and put such immense trust in the creative potential of my fellow artists like I’ve somehow managed to do (especially given the context of my own personal journey as an artist #scapgoatchild).
It’s fucking ra.di.cal. Radical. To invest THIS MUCH time, money, heart into a project that doesn’t have label backing or any financial or institutional support of any kind. Just my own hard-earned, art-earned money and mountains of faith in my fellow creators. My team.
We’ve made something other-wordly. Are you hearing it? Are you seeing it? It’s like…objectively breathtaking.
And in the greater context of those zoomed-out, medium-bending art-is-everything-and-everything-is-art exploration, I just feel like it is REALLY something.
When the cherry-on-top is that beautiful…god. I just really hope it’s enough.
I really hope you can see it. I just want you to see it.
And also…I want to be enough.
I asked my therapist for an art pep talk last week, and he said something like “you know Emily, I could do that for you. But I just think it’ll be much better if you do it for yourself.”
And if that’s the answer here, I guess I’m ready to receive it. But also…this work is for YOU. For me. But also for you. It’s just kind of big and special. And I don’t want anyone who will love it to miss it.