I always say that my artist statement is to not be afraid to talk about the messiness - the unpleasant feelings and happenings around my life. I also try to convey what it feels like and sounds like and smells like and looks like inside of my particular skin, to move through the world as a black American woman in her mid-twenties. Language from songs and TV shows feel integral because it helps to create the environment and describe the full picture.

Morgan Parker

Categorized in : Moving Song Artist

And I would stop and take you in, all of you, and when our eyes lock we'd just stare into each other's souls and all of the lost time would come out in the shape of a big smile, a few tears and a tight hug that feels like...I don't know, it would feel like home.

Morgan Parker

eye soul home

I think sometimes the stars align whether we want them to or not. And we're drawn to certain people and places for no other reason than...Destiny.

Morgan Parker

destiny stars thinking

Love makes you smart and strong. Smart enough to know there is nothing else that matters. Strong enough to know that nothing else can weaken you. When you're in love, you're at peace, you're whole, and always safe. I know I made you feel at peace.

Morgan Parker

smart strong love-you

I think that we need to make it our goal to define freedom for ourselves.

Morgan Parker

goal needs thinking

We kind of have to rewrite our own stories and our own ways of being free.

Morgan Parker

being-free stories way

I really hope that people feel permission to talk about their own troubles, but also to celebrate themselves.

Morgan Parker

celebrate trouble people

My friends and I have all been super motivated to work and to do the work that we need to and want to and think should be in the world.

Morgan Parker

want world thinking

I also think that [political turmoil] gives artists something, a way of kind of processing.

Morgan Parker

artist giving thinking

We can look at history and see that [political turmoil is] fertile ground for art.

Morgan Parker

political looks art

Аrt movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil.

Morgan Parker

turmoil movement kind

Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.

Morgan Parker

creating block noise

So much of the world and the systems that we live within are made to keep us from feeling like we're free. The way that black women in American came to be is just diametrically opposed to being free.

Morgan Parker

being-free black feelings

Hard times are really a fire under your ass to prioritize and think, "Okay, how can I challenge myself to put something in the world that wasn't there that can reach other folks and help them to process?"

Morgan Parker

hard-times fire thinking

Mickalene [Thomas] is an artist that I have admired for a long time. So much of her work inspires me - I spend time looking at her work when I'm writing. I feel like we're working toward the same themes, and I see our work in conversation, whether we know it or not.

Morgan Parker

artist writing long

The book [There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?] is quite complex, and I was worried that it would be marketed as one-sided or flat, and I knew that Mickalene's [Tomas] work would be able to encompass all the many states of being that are in the book.

Morgan Parker

able beautiful book

I wanted [the book 'There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?'] to be colorful. I wanted it to be evocative. I wanted a figure of a black woman that the reader has to confront.

Morgan Parker

black beautiful book

I'm working on a young adult novel. I've been working on it for a while, because I don't know how to write a novel and I'm teaching myself. For that reason, I've been reading a lot of YA [young adults], which I never have before. It's totally new to me.

Morgan Parker

reading teaching writing

I'm not reading any kind of fantasy [for young adults] or Hunger Games or anything like that. It's more just like geeks with crushes. It's very sweet, and I'm enjoying how honest they are, and I'm enjoying the humanity in them.

Morgan Parker

crush reading sweet

So much of my writing process is trying to eliminate any kind of shame or fear of the thoughts that I'm having. Where I would usually backspace, I stop and say, "You know what? This is important, that I say how I feel and don't sugarcoat it, and don't avoid it." In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.

Morgan Parker

important writing trying

After a while, being so honest and so vulnerable on the page ends up affecting my own kind of self possession in the world, because I am not afraid of myself and my own thoughts. I think so much of being a woman, of being a social being, of being polite, is quieting those thoughts. There's so much we try not to say as we go through the day. There's a lot of tempering and self-editing. It is a relief to make writing that space where I don't need to do that.

Morgan Parker

writing trying thinking