The Art: 
A take on the traditional 'pin up girl' pose, A skeleton is seductively spread upon a growing vine - flowers falling as soft light shines down on a mossy background. Her arrangement is meant to evoke a sense of hollow depravity, an unhealthy level of vanity, lust and sloth. Though you can clearly see the  outline where flesh had once existed, we are given a direct look inward at the beginning of the process of reclaiming the higher self. Previously withered to bone, she has but the smallest rays of light shining down on her, a glimmer of hope that is used to feed the budding flowers within the lung, representing the breath - where life exists. Though she may have almost withered away to nothing - it took her reaching this point to recognize that the only cure for her ailments was to become her own disease, to possess herself with her own light. 

the song:

"Be Your Own Disease" is a cautionary spoken word piece which I adapted for an exploration into the 'trip-hop' genre. It functions as a call for us to examine our many hidden Egos, including the attachment to our own  misery. There is a point which we reach in our healing journeys, typically towards the end, when we feel stagnant and unable to release ourselves from the pain which we have worked so hard to transmute. This is when the pain becomes, unconsciously, a ‘Badge of Honor’, something we have spent so long focusing upon that we grow used to it being there and begin to view it as the monster whom we are so valiantly fighting. We begin to integrate our suffering as an attachment, something that is an integral part of our Identity, rather than alchemically transmuting it towards a higher vibration.

“Be Your Own Disease” points a boney finger at our tendency to use even our greatest sufferings as a means to feel pride. Urging the observer to refrain from deifying our personal plights - and choosing, instead, to cure these ailments by becoming the truest version of ourselves. Through the essential act of possessing oneself , becoming our own disease , and eradicating this particular Ego in the process. 

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