Artist’s Statement: I wrote and mixed “danger in ‘are'” almost three years ago, at the age of 19. My voice sounds different and the guy you hear is no longer in my life – but that’s all tangential. “danger in ‘are'” confronts my frustration with being told that I ‘am’ certain things, adjectives (“a fountain of characteristics”) throughout my life, summed up by the common “you are so elegant.” I’m tall, skinny, and pale; while “elegant” is not considered offensive, I’ve heard it so much that now I become angry with it. We like to think of ourselves as unlimited beyond our borders, that “we can be anything we want to be,” but our appearances literally color how other people see us, at least at first. And that, in turn, can color how we see ourselves. While my ethnicity and appearance do not identify with a minority group, and have not been structurally exploited by American institutions – I now, at 22 years old, think of this piece as a way to challenge the casual statement that someone “is” something. I hope “danger in ‘are'” can be taken out of my specific body, and applied to any cause or sentiment – political, emotional, economic – that sees the danger in “are.”
